10 signs of intellectual honesty

When it comes to just about any topic, it seems as if the public discourse on the internet is dominated by rhetoric and propaganda. People are either selling products or ideology. In fact, just because someone may come across as calm and knowledgeable does not mean you should let your guard down and trust what they say. What you need to look for is a track record of intellectual honesty. – Mike Gene

For those of you who are ready to violate sign #7 of intellectual honesty, I point out that Mike Gene is a proponent of intelligent design, albeit an interesting one. From a review of Mike Gene’s book The Design Matrix – Tom Gilson:

The way that he supports ID is refreshingly unique, however. He doesn’t argue for a conclusion of Intelligent Design at all. He argues more modestly, for a suspicion of Intelligent Design. He would have a beef with dogmatists on either side of the issue. Quite helpfully he distinguishes between the strong evidence required for conviction by a court of law, and evidence required by an investigating detective. A detective arrives on the scene with nothing but questions. His first objective is to move toward reasonable suspicions. A little hint there, a vague clue there: these things can move him toward a theory of a crime; and from there he can begin to look for more definite signs. Eventually, much further down the road, proof may come. Mike Gene believes we should recognize ID is in the developing suspicion stage: there is no hard scientific proof of design, but there are hints and clues that raise a most reasonable suspicion, and which can lead to a search for more definite signs.

Mike Gene’s 10 signs of intellectual honesty:

1. Do not overstate the power of your argument. One’s sense of conviction should be in proportion to the level of clear evidence assessable by most. If someone portrays their opponents as being either stupid or dishonest for disagreeing, intellectual dishonesty is probably in play. Intellectual honesty is most often associated with humility, not arrogance.

2. Show a willingness to publicly acknowledge that reasonable alternative viewpoints exist. The alternative views do not have to be treated as equally valid or powerful, but rarely is it the case that one and only one viewpoint has a complete monopoly on reason and evidence.

3. Be willing to publicly acknowledge and question one’s own assumptions and biases. All of us rely on assumptions when applying our world view to make sense of the data about the world. And all of us bring various biases to the table.

4. Be willing to publicly acknowledge where your argument is weak.Almost all arguments have weak spots, but those who are trying to sell an ideology will have great difficulty with this point and would rather obscure or downplay any weak points.

5. Be willing to publicly acknowledge when you are wrong. Those selling an ideology likewise have great difficulty admitting to being wrong, as this undercuts the rhetoric and image that is being sold. You get small points for admitting to being wrong on trivial matters and big points for admitting to being wrong on substantive points. You lose big points for failing to admit being wrong on something trivial.

6. Demonstrate consistency. A clear sign of intellectual dishonesty is when someone extensively relies on double standards. Typically, an excessively high standard is applied to the perceived opponent(s), while a very low standard is applied to the ideologues’ allies.

7. Address the argument instead of attacking the person making the argument. Ad hominem arguments are a clear sign of intellectual dishonesty. However, often times, the dishonesty is more subtle. For example, someone might make a token effort at debunking an argument and then turn significant attention to the person making the argument, relying on stereotypes, guilt-by-association, and innocent-sounding gotcha questions.

8. When addressing an argument, do not misrepresent it. A common tactic of the intellectually dishonest is to portray their opponent’s argument in straw man terms. In politics, this is called spin. Typically, such tactics eschew quoting the person in context, but instead rely heavily on out-of-context quotes, paraphrasing and impression. When addressing an argument, one should shows signs of having made a serious effort to first understand the argument and then accurately represent it in its strongest form.

10. Be willing to publicly acknowledge when a point or criticism is good. If someone is unable or unwilling to admit when their opponent raises a good point or makes a good criticism, it demonstrates an unwillingness to participate in the give-and-take that characterizes an honest exchange.

While no one is perfect, and even those who strive for intellectual honesty can have a bad day, simply be on the look out for how many and how often these criteria apply to someone. In the arena of public discourse, it is not intelligence or knowledge that matters most – it is whether you can trust the intelligence or knowledge of another. After all, intelligence and knowledge can sometimes be the best tools of an intellectually dishonest approach.

Mike Gene’s post on 10 signs of intellectual DIShonesty is based on a blog post by A.robustus on his blog Informing the Misled: Repairing the Damage Done by the Truth.

A new blog by A.robustus takes a very interesting twist on the Ten Signs of Intellectual Honesty. A. robustus writes:

I did a search of the web to see what information was available to an inquisitive reader trying to learn more about the intellectual honesty concept. There’s quite a lot – much of it, unsurprisingly, from colleges and universities from all over the world. The stand-out candidate appears to be 10 Signs of Intellectual Honesty available from the website of one Mike Gene.

While Mike Gene is an intelligent design apologist (who is bound to become the focus of future posts!), I have to admit that his 10 Signs post is splendid. Looking at the number of others who have linked to this particular page I am not alone in that assessment. I recommend it to anybody who is searching for a checklist to ensure that their argument is developed and progresses from a foundation of intellectual honesty.

1. Arrogance or “I am the messenger of truth”. Look for arguments that send the following messages:

“What I am telling you ARE the facts and these facts have, and always will, withstand any test.”

“ Anybody that disagrees with ‘us’ is either stupid or is trying to undermine ‘our’ dedication and hard work.”

“ They have access to the same evidence, but they either ignore it or deliberately misinterpret it to suit their own agenda or hypothesis.”

2. Handwaving or “Your views have no merit”. Look for ‘arguments’ that dismiss other views out of hand. Often accompanied by Sign #1 with the opponent usually being dismissed – not specifically their argument.

3. Unwavering commitment or “I know I am right – why bother arguing?” Anybody who refuses to accept that they may not be 100% correct, or might be looking at the evidence through their own preferred colour of glasses is not being honest to themselves or to their readers/listeners.

4. Avoiding/Ignoring the question or “ . . . and let’s not forget about . . .” Anybody who refuses to admit that their argument is weak in an area and, worse still, avoids answering difficult questions in that area is being intellectually dishonest. If they don’t ignore the question, these people are easily recognised from their efforts to change the subject.

5. Never admitting error or “I am/We are right – regardless of your evidence”. These are the people who will never admit that they are wrong – ever – regardless of clear evidence that demonstrates their error. See Sign #1

6. Employingdouble standards or “Your evidence is unacceptable (because it’s your evidence)”. This is a question of how high the bar is set for the acceptance of evidence – the bar is set at a much higher level for the other party, while it is set far lower for his/her own evidence.

7. Argumentum ad hominem or “You’re a [insert label/stereotype here] . . . and you have a secret agenda” This is a favoured approach used by those who might be arguing from a weak position. It is typically employed to avoid answering a difficult question (Sign #4) or used in conjunction with handwaving (Sign #2).

8. Destroying a straw man or “You might say that, but how do you explain . . . ?”. Usually a case of shifting the subject and attacking the opponent’s position on that, unrelated or remotely related, topic. This is usually employed in an effort to avoid a question (Sign #4) or when the speaker/writer doesn’t have the knowledge to address the issue.

9. Ignoring the principles of critical thinking. Relying on one source of information – usually without question. Anybody who only considers information from a single book, article, paper, video – or any number of these from sources that are known to support that person’s views or opinions is being intellectually dishonest. Sign #1 usually applies in this case.

10. Ignoring [partial] defeat or See Sign #1 An intellectually dishonest speaker/writer will NEVER admit that the other side has found a hole in their argument. You will never see them congratulate an opponent on finding a flaw in their argument and they will use all of the other signs if necessary to draw your attention away from the subject.

JC’s list of 10 signs of intellectual laziness

Intellectual DIShonesty is certainly rampant on the internet. In terms of climate science, I think that intellectual laziness is the bigger problem. Here is my characterization of the signs of intellectual laziness.

5. Cherry picking evidence in presenting your arguments; i.e. failure to present evidence both for and against your arguments.

6. Tribalism that excludes viewpoints from ‘outsiders’.

7. Failure to explicitly place your research and its implications in a broader context of previous scientific research

Ok, I only made it to #7; the others I was coming up with variants of signs that were already mentioned. I’m sure you can think of others

JC summary: While there is nothing really new here that hasn’t been discussed on previous Climate Etc. posts under the ethics tag, there are some fresh perspectives presented here. In any event, we should regularly remind ourselves of these principles as we get caught up in the debate du jour.

In closing, this statement from Mike Gene bears repeating:

While no one is perfect, and even those who strive for intellectual honesty can have a bad day, simply be on the look out for how many and how often these criteria apply to someone. In the arena of public discourse, it is not intelligence or knowledge that matters most – it is whether you can trust the intelligence or knowledge of another. After all, intelligence and knowledge can sometimes be the best tools of an intellectually dishonest approach.

This paragraph hits home for me. I do work really hard at trying to be intellectually honest. I am less worried about being ‘right’, but with my attention to uncertainty I am rarely really incorrect :) . I try to be trustworthy. In the fallout from Climategate, the climate scientists argued that Isaac Newton was a SOB and this didn’t invalidate his science, which was an argument against paying much attention to the behavior of climate scientists. That argument is not convincing for the following reason. Because of the complexity of the climate system, there is heavy reliance on the judgment of experts. The loss of trust resulting from Climategate (see my previous essay here) has had wide repercussions in the public debate on climate change.

880 responses to “10 signs of intellectual honesty”

Reblogged this on Professor Brian Blais' Blog and commented:
This post, and others like it, are things I try to communicate to my students. Recognizing, and publicly acknowledging ones shortcomings, is a big one in my book.

You find me recommending Mike Gene’s book “The Design Matrix” shortly after it came out as one of only three books to read to get a gist of Intelligent Design. Lehigh Biochemistry Prof Mike Behe’s “The Edge of Evolution” and Cornell Genetics Prof. John Sanford’s “Genetic Entropy: The Mystery of the Genome” are the other two on my list of must-reads.

Behe spoke at my grad school department in the late 1990s. I found him embarrassing. I grant his ability to brazen it out and keep a straight face – nothing else. He is the equivalent of the attorney defending the serial killer suspect who was caught cooking the remains of the victims in a stew pot

Sorry, but this isn’t a difficult one. If you buy Behe, you can’t think your way out of a paper bag. There is no ‘there’ there.

David, I take it that your recommendations are for those who want to understand the arguments which have been propounded for ID. I shall try to get round to reading them in due course, as I am fascinated by arguments which try to defend such an unlikely hypothesis. May I take it that you are not yourself a disciple?.

David, I take it that your recommendations are for those who want to understand the arguments which have been propounded for ID. I shall try to get round to reading them in due course, as I am fascinated by arguments which try to defend such an unlikely hypothesis. May I take it that you are not yourself a disciple?.”

Of course David S is a disciple of ID. He moderated Dembski’s blog on ID called Uncommon Descent. That’s where he perfected his argumentation techniques. Disciplines such as Intelligent Design only exist for the sake of argumentation. They don’t actually solve any problems.

I’m of the same opinion as Mike Gene for the same reasons. If you read his book “The Design Matrix” you may presume I agree with essentially all of it. I believe ID has merit but I’m not convinced one way or the other. I’m convinced that those who rigidly accept it as true or reject it as false are driven by dogma not objective analysis. There’s a bottom line one keeps coming up against. There are two sets of examples of codes and machines that operate via abstract coded instructions in the universe that we know about. Where the origin can be determined unambiguously the codes and machines are products of human intelligence. When we find similar machines of even greater complexity than anything humans have ever produced and then knowingly state they came about by a random dance of atoms it is nothing short of preposterous. Machines like that don’t self assemble de novo in anyone’s experience.

Mike Gene in his book talks about the so-called “illusion of design” which Dawkins popularized in The Blind Watchmaker. Gene goes on to say that illusions vanish on close inspection. Yet as we explore the universe more closely on ever smaller and ever larger scales the illusion of design doesn’t go away.

For WebHubTelescope, yes I ran Bill Dembski’s blog for several years. I was also kicked out of it and out of every inner circle in the ID movement for failure to conform to the party platform. I was pretty much the token agnostic and that finally rubbed too many people at the Discovery Institute the wrong way. Doubt isn’t allowed in either camp doncha know. Welcome to bandwagon science. Check your skepticism at the door please.

You presume there’s a CAGW problem to solve. The only CAGW problem I recognize is dogmatists such as yourself who uncritically accept the consensus narrative and expect others to be as uncritical as you are and leap on the “save civilization from itself” bandwagon. That bandwagon IS the problem. I can’t solve that by myself certainly but I can do some small part in overtuning the applecart and I can certainly get myself on record so when the truth emerges I’m either vindicated or proven to be an ignorant putz. And unlike certain cowardly others [cough cough] I’m willing to attach my real name to my opinions on the matter. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, WebHubTelescope, whoever you are.

No Web. I was the top adminstrator of the blog. Only Dembski had equal administrative authority along with a technician who managed the server hardware and software. I authored scores or perhaps hundreds of articles myself. I determined which others could be editors or authors and what level they were assigned within the WordPress authority-level framework.

The Left essentially says Damn the Fossil-Fuel-Burning Public and demands power over our pocketbooks. Some of thus smell the sulfur when taxes are proposed on the use of resources we could develop in America buy Leftist policies prevent.

Continuing to send dollars to parts of the world that hate America and papering-over deficits by selling bonds to China so government has more money to play with definitely are examples of No Brain at Work.

Truly revenue neutral means you get a net rebate if you are below average in carbon consumption. It is interesting to consider how such a thing could be set up. You can’t compare households, transportation and commercial sectors in any equal way. It could be done on a per-sector basis, so household carbon taxes go into a pool that turns into an equally divided rebate, but in an area like the US, people using more energy in the winter cold states or summer hot states would be subsidizing those in more temperate areas. It may need to be a more local pool, like at the state level. There you can game the system by having a second house that you don’t heat, but pay energy bills for, entitling yourself to a rebate as an efficient user. For automobile fuel it is even worse. Those that drive a lot are subsidizing the grannies who use their cars only to go to the church. If the carbon tax on gas goes into a pool that subsidizes gas that is pointless because it is a circle where you pay in what you get out.

Max_OK: thanks for the laugh. Revenue-neutral carbon tax, haha! And Jim D’s in full design mode, thinking through the details. Classic!

Nothing like redistribution of wealth, eh guys? Works right up until the point that those who supply the wealth that gets redistributed decide its time to move on.

How about we just let those who earn it keep more of it? You know, today I pay more than 10x the taxes of someone who earns only 3x less than I do. Probably not a big surprise that I don’t find that fair.

I am actually opposed to a revenue neutral tax, even though a flat one would give most normal consumers, I figure, a net rebate of a few hundred dollars per year while industry pays little compared to their coffers. I would prefer such a tax to go towards the expenses of adaptation (irrigation, water resource management, coastal protection, flood and drought insurance, fuel and energy cost reduction, etc.)

A revenue neutral carbon tax is a brainless shibboleth. If set at the highest rate in the world – $30/tonne – the effect is so marginal as to be undetectable. This may be because of the inelasticity of energy demand wrt price- and that a growing economy translates into higher demand.

If set at a price that results in substitution of sources of energy – then the revenue dries up, there is a deficit or higher taxes elsewhere and economies are left with a one off jump in energy prices and impacts on productivity.

Jim D | April 20, 2013 at 6:02 pm |
I am actually opposed to a revenue neutral tax, even though a flat one would give most normal consumers, I figure, a net rebate of a few hundred dollars per year while industry pays little compared to their coffers.
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Where do you think the “industry coffers” reside Jim D? Who owns those coffers? Do you have the impression the coffers are untaxed? What percentage of the total US taxes do you think are paid by corporations (being sure to add in the taxes paid by their employees on the salaries they are paid, their shareholders on the dividends they receive, the sales tax they pay on purchase from suppliers, etc.)?

Your statement gives the impression you feel there is a magic, untaxed pot of money just sitting there waiting to be had. Is that what you believe?

Jim D, if corporations add a few percent to their fuel bills, who will pay for that? Where is the magic pot of money?

Here’s what is very likely to happen: a) they raise their prices and their customers pay for it; b) they layoff a few percent of their employees to cover the same cost; or c) a combination of the a & b.

Just look at what’s going on even before the affordable care act is in place. Or look at the response to the medical device tax that went into effect this year.

ksd, I would guess that the employee payroll and other costs far exceed the fuel bill of any well run organization, as would the turnover. If they can barely keep the lights on, that would probably be the least of their problems by the time they get to that stage.

Jim D, do you seriously not understand? A corporation will react to maintain its profit margin. It has to because it has shareholders to satisfy. Doesn’t matter how large or small their fuel bill, they will either raise prices, layoff staff, or both.

The medical device tax in the affordable care act was “only” 2.3% of sales. Now go look at the actions of US medical device companies as a result. Search “obamacare medical device tax layoff”.

ksd, do the math. A credible fuel bill, based on a typical household cost since I don’t know what businesses pay, would be at most 10% of the payroll (for minimum wage workers). Adding a 10% carbon tax to it makes 11%. Doesn’t seem significant. It would be lost in the noise of seasonal changes and varying energy costs.

‘Rumblings in Washington, D.C. about a possible federal carbon tax are being informed by B.C.’s groundbreaking revenue neutral model, Metro has learned, and so are discussions in several western states.

At least two draft bills are being circulated by a handful of Democrats in the nation’s Capitol, despite the Obama administration’s insistence last November it would not push for a carbon tax, which Republicans are largely against.

“Our Climate Action Secretariat works with a lot of jurisdictions,” B.C. Environment Minister Terry Lake said Tuesday via phone from Oregon, where he will deliver remarks Wednesday about B.C.’s tax to a state senate committee.

Nearly five years ago B.C. became the first jurisdiction in North America to introduce a broad-based, revenue neutral carbon tax.

The tax, which currently sits at $30 per tonne, contributed to a 4.5 per cent decline in greenhouse gas emissions between 2007 and 2010, even as the province’s GDP and population grew.’

Business downturns and the increasing use of natural gas is a much bigger factor.

‘Energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that is widely believed to contribute to global warming, have fallen 12% between 2005 and 2012 and are at their lowest level since 1994, according to a recent estimate by the Energy Information Administration, the statistical arm of the U.S. Energy Department.’ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324763404578430751849503848.html

Chief, I’m not sure I would agree with you, but I may not fully understand your argument.

Anyway, I am glad to see the revenue neutral carbon tax gain traction. It looks like Oregon may adopt the B. C. model.

The following is also from the Vancouver Metro News article:

Tom Potiowsky, a former Oregon state economist and the director of Portland State University’s Northwest Economic Research Center, hosted a pubic discussion with Lake at the university on Tuesday. He said Oregon is impressed with B.C.’s model, and after studies are done it could have legislation on the table as soon as 2015

“If you would have called two years ago, we would have said there’s absolutely no discussion in Oregon about a carbon tax, but things have changed pretty rapidly,” he said.
“I don’t think people thought about the repatriation back of the carbon tax to lower other taxes, that neutrality part of it, so I think once people recognized that that’s the real viable option they warmed up more to the idea.”

It is pretty easy – the US reduction was twice as much in the energy sector without a tax.

The EU carbon price has terminally collapsed, other carbon prices are utterly pathetic – apart from Australia and that’s totally pathetic and will be removed in September. Hicksville USA would be idiotic to go down that path.

It is pointless and marginal. A magical solution for pissant progressives that serves only to distract from real ways forward.

It is utterly dishonest. If set at a level that would encourage energy substitution – the revenue would dry up. No one would be compensated and energy prices would be permanently higher and productivity lower. It is such braindead nonsense.

It was such a no-brainer here in Australia that our feral government faces the potential of a $9bil blackhole every year. Thank goodness these socialist cretins and their ‘Carbon (dioxide) Tax’ are soon to be hoofed out of government and replaced with adults.

Since income tax is not a sacred concept, I would gladly accept a carbon tax in return for the abolition of income tax.
Trouble is – once a tax is imposed it turns sacred and can never be abolished.
Proponents of a “revenue neutral” carbon tax need to specify which other tax will be scrapped before the carbon tax is imposed.

The carbon tax, by the way, is far saner, correct, and less harmful that the insane ETS (emission trading scheme or cap &trade) imposed in Europe.

And – the most important point: it’s al nonsense. No tax will prevent the use of fossil fuels, because we have no others, and can’t live without energy.

Jim D, I see that you don’t understand. The fuel bill is not the only place a corporation would see its costs rise. How about all of the material they buy from suppliers? Those don’t arrive on a magic carpet so their costs are going up as well. The electricity they use isn’t free either, up it goes. The equipment they use? Yup, from suppliers who pay higher bills and shipped in using fuel as well.

By the way Jim D, it strikes me as interesting that you reduce the carbon tax down to the simplest terms do impacting the “fuel bill” only and don’t see the other areas it will have an impact. And that you reduce it to small corporations with minimum wage workers.

Sort of like climate science has over-simplified climate changes down to CO2.

The 2 party preferred is at 56% to 44% – a wipeout victory for the Coalition – and has hovered about that for a year or more. The labor minority government has a terminal stink of confusion and incompetence about it.

There are two remaining Labor states – a minority government in Tasmania and South Australia following landslide victories for the Liberals in NSW, Queensland and Western Australia in recent time. With corruption scandals in past governments erupting in NSW and Queensland – there is no conceivable way back for Labor for a decade or more if ever.

In Australia – the Liberal Party has broad support amongst young people, ethnic communities and the broader public. We suggest that is the way forward for the GOP but there is no equivalence between the US and Australia. We have an economy that works because people insist that governments balance budgets. Perhaps the biggest failure of the present government but one that is redeemable with a change that will happen.

I think this means that the money I would pay in carbon tax could be offset by a reduction on my income tax, right? Surely those of a right wing disposition wouldn’t want my income tax bill to be as large as it is?

It is utterly dishonest. If set at a level that would encourage energy substitution – the revenue would dry up. No one would be compensated and energy prices would be permanently higher and economic productivity lower.

Max, if you believe that you’ll also maybe like to view this bridge I have for sale ? The tax collected will go to the corporate pals of the system … the taxpayer will see little of it. Please examine what was done here in Australia … that is where you are headed for with a carbon (dioxide) tax.

“capitalism and a free market is a prerequisite for the maximization of net present wealth and the most efficient allocation of scarce resources”

Ha Ha , not for long. Given a free market, the most powerful capitalists will form monopolies, which means the market will no longer be free. Carnegie, Rocky, Morgan, and others showed us how that works.

Max – you talk about markets as if they exist outside of the rule of law. One of the most fundamental market laws concerns monopolies. The US antitrust laws are some of the most rigorous in the world. No one but you is suggesting that these be repealed.

Chief, a free market is a market free of regulations. We have a regulated market. Some interests want to move it more in the direction of a free market (less regulated), while others want it more regulated.

A free market is one where people have the choice to produce or consume according to their own desires. Some Australian environmentalists have proposed committees to determine what is produced. This is the actual threat to free markets. It extends to alcohol, Coca-Cola and fries. In principle I quite like Coca-Cola and fries – and indeed went through a stage of mixing it with Jack Daniels – two great things – and with a Homer Hudson chaser. In principle I think people should look after their own health. Monopoly laws – however – are fundamental to having a freedom to chose.

I can’t keep doing this – you need to take care of your own educational deficits.

It is utterly dishonest. If set at a level that would encourage energy substitution – the revenue would dry up.

Yes, in an ideal world, the revenue could indeed dry up. That would be a measure of the scheme’s success not its failure. Very low CO2 emissions and little tax revenue. Everyone would be happy. Wouldn’t they?
.

Climate science escapes sharing data and code and also escapes rigorous criticism from some of its more notorious practitioners. Climate science is barely a science at all. It has a rather dingy and tattered veneer of science, but that is all.

I don’t think Max_OK thougt this one through. He said, “If you were X, you’d be a democrat” where X is a range of values going from completely (intellectually) dishonest to completely (intellectually) honest. In other words, his comment is perfectly in line with Michael Mann being a total liar. In that case, Max_OK would be saying, “If you’re as much of a liar as Mann, you’d be a democrat.”

You heard it here first. If you have absolutely no intellectual honesty (as Mann does not), you’d be a Democrat.

Puh-leez Max_OK. A dishonest person is as honest as any person who is exactly as dishonest as he is. Honesty is a scale which includes negative values. My comment was perfectly correct.

This is a case where what you said wasn’t what you intended to say. You could have shown intellectual honesty by admitting I had a point. All you had to do was admit your wording was imprecise in a meaningless, but humorous way. You chose not to. You chose to make an argument of a silly joke rather than accept something that kind of appeared to be a criticism of you.

Good natured ribbing should not provoke hostility. That it does indicates things about you.

And willard makes things up. I didn’t substitute anything like he claims. I didn’t equate, conflate or substitute “being intellectually honest” with “being a total liar.” I said, quite accurately, being “as intellectually honest” as another person can mean being a total liar. Even Max_OK accepts the approach as he used it in his response to me.

It’s simple. Honesty is a scale: Honest > 0 > Dishonest. If someone is -7 Dishonest, you are more honest than them if your value is – 6, 0 or 4. You are as honest as them if you are at -7.

If someone asks, “How honest is he?” it is perfectly okay to say, “He’s a total liar.” That’s because honesty is a scale.

Standing alone outside of any context it is logically possible to construe this in the way you did. In fact, you probably thought it was funny to construe it in a way that was quite the opposite of what Max meant. You know max. you know what he thinks of Mann. Construing his sentence to mean the opposite by playing on the abiguous is funny ( kinda in a 5th grade precious brat sort of way.. you know the signs that say “slow children at play” ) its funny, but being funny is hardly an argument. And now that you’ve proven that you can dish out 5th grade humor. what other stupid pet tricks do you have

Mosher, I made a silly joke because I thought it was funny. That’s the main reason for “stupid” tricks relying on wordplay. The next most common reason is to provoke unreasonable responses, which I did. I find it amusing when light-hearted humor can be used to highlight, or even exacerbate, someone’s intellectual dishonesty.

As for other “stupid pet tricks,” I wasn’t planning on offering any more. A single trick was all I needed here. Why waste time and effort coming up with new approaches when the goal has already been reached?

(But since you’re here… Have you decided to stop (at least effectively) lying about me and the Gao issue? It’d probably be a good idea for you to. Which reminds me, I need to talk to Henrik about anoher bug in his package. It’s annoying how long it’s taking me to just be able to read BEST’s data.)

Max_OK, I offered a clear explanation for my interpretation of your comment. You can claim I misrepresented what you said, but if you don’t address what I said, you’re just going to display the intellectual dishonesty I accuse you of.

As for hostility, you were defensive and attacked me indirectly while refusing to engage in any direct confrontation of ideas. What explains that if not hostility? There was no humor or alternative purpise for your remark. It existsd purely as an attack.

It seems that far too much was made out of a small play on words by Brandon.

I would prefer to have let these grammatical/syntax errors go through to the keeper because this blog is a sandbox IMO and I, for one do not keep score.

If it ever occurred to me that every word I write is scrutinesed for logic, syntax or even saying something stupid would be recorded against me and thrown back at me much later on, in a completely different context, I would feel a bit wary of expressing myself openly.

Mosher, you said I hadn’t read the paper. I responded by quoting it, showing it contradicts what you said. I even quoted you making contradictory comments about the paper. You conveniently disappeared rather than address anything I said. In fact, you used personal attacks while avoiding addressing my points.

It was a perfect example of (intellectual) dishonesty. I should find the link so people can see.

Brandon, “as intellectually honest as Michael Mann” is a particular value, not “a range of values going from completely (intellectually) dishonest to completely (intellectually) honest”. Did you mean to say that?

simon abingdon, I may have been unclear in the comment you quoted. I was not meaning to say Mann’s degree of intellectual honesty was a range of values. I meant it is a single value taken from a range of values (that spans from positive to negative). That’s in line with what you say.

Brandon you are welcome to make silly jokes at my expense if that what you like to do but I will probably pass on getting involved in any argument with you on semantics or underlying motivations. Be assured that I will not take umbrage because life’s too short and the impotance of all this is minimal.

Peter Davies, I certainly understand that. I prefer not to get into such arguments myself. I like wordplay because it’s fun. Semantic arguments drain all the humor out of it. The only time I want to have them is when trying to understand things (sometimes they’re necessary).

Mostly, I just think we should all get a laugh out of unintentional humor. Like with your typo!

I think a lot of the “skeptics” here have just a suspicion the IPCC report could be right in its sensitivity range or century projections, but for the sake of a good argument, or just politically, they are not being intellectually honest here and instead put on display a certainty that the IPCC is wrong.

Overlaying annual trends on the February-only curve as you do can be forgiven since the upward trend is common to both. Something sunshinehours1 apparently seeks to discredit by cherry-picking, aka intellectual dishonesty. Why do you not comment on this?

What you have to realize is that run-of-the-mill “science” was sloppy and the technology was primitive back then. All it takes is to be inconsistent in taking measurements during the day or using uncalibrated or broken instruments and the systemic noise becomes overwhelming. What one really needs to do is to compensate for all those variations by compressing the data over the course of a year.

BTW, this yearly compression also removes the compensating errors of people recording data that is exaggerated in both directions. It is human nature to exaggerate heat during the summer and cold during the winter. Add the two errors together, and, voila, they cancel each other out and one is left with a more neutral view of the yearly temperature.

“Natural variability explains nothing. It is the absence of an explanation.”

Somebody better tell those climate deniers over at real Climate.

“It first needs to be emphasized that natural variability and radiatively forced warming are not competing in some no-holds barred scientific smack down as explanations for the behavior of the global mean temperature over the past century. Both certainly played a role in the evolution of the temperature trajectory over the 20th century, and significant issues remain to be resolved about their relative importance.”

It’s also interesting they were talking about the “pause” in global warming in this paper…in 2009.

“The contentious part of our paper is that the climate system appears to have had another ‘episode’ around the turn of the 21st century, coinciding with the much discussed “halt” in global warming. Whether or not such a halt has really occurred is of course controversial (it appears quite marked in the HadCRUT3 data, less so in GISTEMP); only time will tell if it’s real. Regardless, it’s important to note that we are not talking about global cooling, just a pause in warming.”

“Do you mean like the statement “he died of natural causes” doesn’t explain exactly why he died?”

Partly.

Let’s say we look at a temperature curve and we see ups and downs. and lets make the example really simple. Imagine the ups and downs went exactly in sync with the solar cycle.

We might then argue that the ups in down in TEMPERATURE was explained by ups and downs in SUN SPOTS or TSI. see how that works.. forget the truth of the matter focus on the moving pieces

And so here you see the structure of an explanation. One ontological or phenomenological entity ( temperature ) is explained ( or replaced by ) another entity– TIS.. Such that if we understand TSI we thereby understand temperature.. and knowing the explainer thing allows us to predict the explained thing. So you tell me TSI and I tell you temperature.. because one explains the other. Talk about one can be translated into talk about the other.

When people look at a temperature record and say “oh its explained by natural variation” they are explaining nothing. they are just renaming it. Oh we call that up and down natural variation. Well, what causes “natural variation”.. err.. well.. its natural.. it needs no explnation.. or they try El nino? ha. just another substitution.. Not an explanation. Thats the bob tisdale trick..

Another way to look at it is natural variation is whats left over when you’ve explained everything you know.. So, since skeptics claim to know nothing about climate.. its basically everything is left over..
fundamentally anti scientific..

It is not “unscientific” to admit that there are large unknowns and, hence, great uncertainties.

In fact, I would argue just the opposite: it is “unscientific” to overstate certainty by ignoring that there may be factors whose mechanisms we do not yet understand (both “known” and “unknown” unknowns).

IPCC made the mistake of underestimating natural forcing factors in its AR4 report (only ~7% of all forcing since 1750), because it only considered the one natural forcing it “knew” (direct solar irradiance) and ASS-U-MEd there were no others.

So, by using this logic, GHGs (principally CO2) became the main drivers of past climate.

This approach clearly backfired, as demonstrated by the “pause”.

Now there is a general recognition that natural factors are playing a more important role than thought earlier, even though the mechanisms for these natural factors are still unknown.

WHT, you can compress average or smooth the data any way you choose – just as long as you recognise that they cease to be temperature data at that point, and you cannot do further analysis on them as if they were still temperature data.
In particular, you cannot then apply the same rules as you would for absolute temperature, like, for example, the S-B equation which involves the 4th power of K
Neither should you use them to liken the effects of a few degrees on a Siberian winter to a Texan heat wave.

Steven Mosher | April 20, 2013 at 8:08 pm |
“The proof that it is not natural variability.”

Natural variability explains nothing. It is the absence of an explanation.
———-
Of course, natural variability is short hand for the dozens (hundreds?) of parameters that influence the climate. Everything from ENSO to volcanoes to orbital cycles to clouds to the dozens we haven’t even thought of yet. All coupled in a massively nonlinear system.

Yet amongst all of this, it is the CO2 sensitivity we can extract. Excuse me if I don’t buy into that. Here’s a question, what is the sensitivity to a doubling of cloud surface area and volume? Is it positive or negative?

manacker | April 21, 2013 at 2:18 am |
Mosh
We probably agree on this, but I’d like to make sure.

It is not “unscientific” to admit that there are large unknowns and, hence, great uncertainties.
————–
+1 max

And please let’s start with the basics that there is no global mean temperature. Taking a grossly under sampled (geographically) set of data and smearing it to cover the globe does not make a global mean temperature. Where have these techniques been validated?

When we look at the BEST data, they show ~30% of stations show a negative trend, 70% show positive. What if our geographic sampling, which is artificially constrained in so many ways, is unintentionally biased to geographies that show warming? We don’t have to be far off for “global” warming to turn into “global” cooling, do we?

k scott denison said “Of course, natural variability is short hand for the dozens (hundreds?) of parameters that influence the climate. Everything from ENSO to volcanoes to orbital cycles to clouds to the dozens we haven’t even thought of yet. All coupled in a massively nonlinear system.

Yet amongst all of this, it is the CO2 sensitivity we can extract. Excuse me if I don’t buy into that. Here’s a question, what is the sensitivity to a doubling of cloud surface area and volume? Is it positive or negative?”

This succinctly expresses my concerns about the state of the science in relation to the study of climate sensitivity. How can the effect of ACO2 or even all CO2 build-up in the atmosphere be evaluated in the context of movements in global average temperature?

Peter Dais, you write “Yet amongst all of this, it is the CO2 sensitivity we can extract. Excuse me if I don’t buy into that.”

I agree. But Steen Mosher writes “Natural variability explains nothing. It is the absence of an explanation.”

What you need to realise, Peter, is that Steven Mosher claims, as does lolwot, that climate sensitiity has been MEASURED. He has not provided a number for the sensitivity, not an accuracy, nor a reference where this was reported, but he is convinced that we have actual measureements of what the sensitivity of CO2 really is.

I was quoting K scott denison Jim but I agree with you entirely and said something to this effect in the previous thread on climate sensitivity. How do you isolate any one variable from all the others so that any effect on another can be estimated/measured/verified in an open system?

WHT, besides which, the HADCRUT4 data which you ‘compressed’ have already had their summer/winter differences removed, by virtue of being anomaly data.
“

You cannot remove differences arising from subjectivity. All it takes for temperature data is for someone to manually record temperatures to the nearest degree. On cold days, a person would be biased to round closer to a cold integer value and on hot days to round closer to a hot value. Everything was manually recorded back then. Explain how you can remove this kind of anomaly.

This subjectivity happens frequently with manually recorded data. I am working on an environmental modeling book, and I noticed a very strange anomaly with old USA digital elevation modeling (DEM) terrain data. Old surveying data through vast swaths of the country shows obvious biases to 50 foot elevation intervals.

Look at all those rather artificial-looking plateaus in the rather typical elevation profile. This also shows up with autocorrelations as shown in the right inset, where a strong pair correlation exists between 15 meter (50 ft) intervals.

In this case the subjectivity happens from expediency. Surveyors have a job to do and they want to get it done. Right down numbers like 1800′, 1850′, 1900′ and no one will care as long as the rough lay of the land is estimated.

The USGS doesn’t want anyone to use the original DEM data anymore and instead point you to more recent data. It’s not that the old DEM doesn’t work well for rough absolute evaluations, but that is loaded with all these nasty correlations.

Same thing with old temperature data. Get people like me and Mosh together to search for these subjective anomalies and we could probably suss all the noisy weirdness out.

WHT, the anomaly data is already compensated for those sort of subjective errors, by virtue of the fact that those same errors are present in the monthly averages used to calculate the anomalies.
In fact, there is one kind of subjective error which would be enhanced rather than diminished – and that would be that people who believe it’s warming might tend to round winter temperatures up rather than down.

Notice how much the values fluctuated in 1800 and then it gradually improved until post-1900 when we started seeing the true aleatory uncertainty in the numbers. That is why the anecdotal numbers pre-1900 that L.M. Sunshine is trying to push are suspect.

“And please let’s start with the basics that there is no global mean temperature. Taking a grossly under sampled (geographically) set of data and smearing it to cover the globe does not make a global mean temperature. Where have these techniques been validated?”
####################################################
1. You will never find me claiming that there is a “thing” called the global mean temperature.
2. The field is oversampled , not undersampled. However, as you
go back in time you will reach a point where the sampling is
spatially biased.
3. There is no “smearing” of data over the globe. The samples taken are used to construct a field which is the estimated temperature at every location. You can test this estimate by holding out data or doing
a k fold cross valdation.

4. The validation of the techniques? Start with Cressie. Or if you like
look at our validation using synthetic data or look at the jacknife results. Or take the entire dataset of 36000 stations and randomly
select 5000, 1000, or 500.

#############
When we look at the BEST data, they show ~30% of stations show a negative trend, 70% show positive. ”

Actually that is not exactly accurate. A portion of that 30% show a negative trend because
A) they end in the early part of the record.
B) they only have data during short periods.
C) the negative trend is not significant
D) the negative trend is PRIOR TO the scalpel step
E) they are missing data.

The POINT of the 30% negative trend was to highlight ONE ISSUE.
The issue of S/N in detecting UHI.

The rate falls to 10%. And of those 95% are in the US. And when you look at those they are stations that moved. And this is PRIOR to scapling.

#######################

“What if our geographic sampling, which is artificially constrained in so many ways, is unintentionally biased to geographies that show warming? We don’t have to be far off for “global” warming to turn into “global” cooling, do we?”

WHT, I agree that the very early data is a lot noisier in that respect, although that wasn’t very clear from the HADCRUT4 data in your first link.
Also, your point about extreme values pre-1900 works both ways – both high and low extremes are suspect.
Having said that, zooming in on the early BEST data appears to show that the cold extremes seem to be more ‘out there’ than the warm ones.

Your first comment “WHT, you can compress average or smooth the data any way you choose “ should have been directed at Little Miss Sunshine’s egregious cherry-picking of data instead of my attempt to rationalize it as noise.

No, I answered your comment, and only yours, with what I thought was a valid point – I didn’t even read anyone else’s comments – and your comments did not make it clear who you were responding to or even if you were responding to anyone in particular.
So don’t attack me and then accuse me of being argumentative.

You are sure that doubling CO2 doesn’t lead to a long-term warming in excess of 2 C despite the fact that we are half way to a doubling and have had nearly 1 C in transient response already, more than 1 C in continental and polar areas that react faster. That doesn’t give you even a little suspicion they may be right?

We have temperature data since 1850; it has warmed by around 0.7°C since then.

Natural factors have been responsible for 7% (IPCC) to 50% (several solar studies) of the warming.

According to IPCC, all other anthropogenic factors beside CO2 (other GHGs, aerosols) have cancelled each other out.
Forcing from CO2 ~ total anthropogenic forcing.
We have a CO2 record (Mauna Loa) since 1958, with ice core estimates prior to this date.

These tell us (Siegenthaler 1986) that CO2 was at around 287 ppmv in 1850

Jim D | April 20, 2013 at 1:23 pm |
You are sure that doubling CO2 doesn’t lead to a long-term warming in excess of 2 C despite the fact that we are half way to a doubling and have had nearly 1 C in transient response already, more than 1 C in continental and polar areas that react faster.
—————–
Nope, I’m not sure of this. But neither are you. That’s the point. sunshinehours1 states a reasonable alternative.

How many parameters affect the climate? Dozens? Hundreds? And yet it would seem all of the focus is on one. Why?

Wat is the climate sensitivity to a doubling (or halfing) of each of these?

– Would you believe it if your statement were turned around as follows?

I think a lot of the “skeptics”“believers” here have just a suspicion the IPCC report could be rightwrong in its sensitivity range or century projections, but for the sake of a good argument, or just politically, they are not being intellectually honest here and instead put on display a certainty that the IPCC is wrongright

Yes, based on physics and other evidence, I would stand by what I wrote in the below link. It is very easy to see why it is a science and evidence-based consensus view to the extent of being as obvious to me as the sun heating the earth.

doubling CO2 causes about 1 C of warming, and that given time the ocean warms by 1 C and that maintains the relative humidity by increasing atmospheric water vapor about 7%, which causes the water vapor feedback to more than double the CO2 effect. The water vapor feedback is the largest one, followed by the ice albedo feedback.

This is not correct.

According to IPCC AR4 WG1, WV feedback is the largest (1.80Wm-2°K), more than doubling the CO2 effect alone – roughly half of the increase is cancelled out by a negative lapse rate feedback (-0.84 Wm-2°K), so that part is correct.

But the second largest positive feedback according to IPCC is the cloud feedback ( 0.69 Wm-2°K) accounting for 1.3°C of the 3.2°C 2xCO2 ECS.

Surface albedo feedback is much smaller (at 0.26 Wm-2°K).

Of course, there are serious questions regarding both the magnitude and even the sign of the cloud feedback. IPCC conceded that clouds “remain the largest source of uncertainty”.

Excellent post. It is the intellectual laziness of most, including the MSM, that enables the intellectual dishonesty of some.
Critical thinking, however, is more than just fact checking from multiple sources. It requires questioning underlying assumptions and perspectives. Alertness to certain common categories of ‘illusion’ (a catch all phrase for those who advance agendas by distorting, hiding, or ignoring ‘truth’) helps. I wrote a book about it published last year, with about 80 real world examples ranging from trivial to crucial. Unfortunately the penultimate chapter was on climate change because it so richly illustrated all that had come before. On such an important subject, that is beyond unfortunate.

Thanks for taking on the extra burden of this blog to improve the quality of climate related discourse.

“It is the intellectual laziness of most, including the MSM, that enables the intellectual dishonesty of some.”

You got that right. It’s the same thing for Intelligent Design. Few know any significant detail of the basic molecular machinery in cells. Without that knowledge you can’t even begin to assess the odds that law & chance alone could have produced it in a finite universe.

Good job that evolutionary biologists don’t think that the biosphere is stocked with life forms that arose by chance then isn’t it.
Dawkins gives descriptions of what evolutionary biologists actually believe, and why, as to how we believe that species came into existence following the origin of life.

I prefer to discuss DNA, RNA, ribosomes, and various accessory enzymes involved in the specification and manufacture of proteins. Discounting virus particles as living things all living cells possess the basic molecular machinery described above without evolution by descent with change is not possible. I don’t have any bone to pick with microbe-to-man evolution. I have a bone to pick with mud-to-microbe evolution. This is often called “chemical evolution”.

Mike Gene and I both prefer a flavor of Intelligent Design called front-loading which basically states that all the information required to produce the life we see today was present when life first began. Evolution by common descent with change thus becomes a matter of expression of genetic information in a prescribed manner that was present from the word go. Neither of us have much time for biblical young earth creationism beyond saying it’s possible but not plausible. Gene ranks a lot of stuff on scales of impossible, possible, plausible, and likely. I do the same and find myself in great agreement with Gene’s rankings. We’re both engineers so it’s probably not surprising that upon close examination we both reach similar opinions. You should probably read his book before having an opinion on it, by the way, but I’d put it as possible, plausible, and quite likely that you’ll form your opinion without reading the tome. ;-)

As an example of the ranking scale it’s not possible that DocMartyn and ianl8888 are writing to me from Alpha Centauri because the speed of light prohibits them from posting responses in less than 8 years.

It’s possible but not plausible that DocMartyn and ianl8888 are green bug eyed Martians writing from a secret base on the moon.

It’s possible, plausible, and likely that Docmartyn and ianl8888 are humans writing via a computer where yours truly was an intelligent agent partly responsible for the design of that computer over the past 35 years that I’ve been designing microcomputer hardware, software, and firmware.

In answer to ian8888, is it not true that ID proponents would not necessarily say the intelligent designer is a benevolent all-seeing being, but could just as easily be a long-ago alien that created the genetic code as a machine?

Jim D, Intelligent Design does cover such a theory, but many proponents of ID wouldn’t accept it. You’re right as long as we limit ourselves to ID itself. We just have to remember many ID proponents believe things not supported by ID.

(ID is used as a trojan horse far more than as a serious attempt at science. You’re describing the “science” of ID, but that’s a small component.)

Yes, that’s quite correct. I was drummed out of the movement for calling them to the carpet on it both in private and in public. The vast majority of ID proponents are fundamentalist Christians and are motivated by that and nothing else. There are exceptions. Mike Behe for instance readily concedes the earth is 4 billion years old and life evolved from one or a possibly a few primordial cell lines through descent with modification. That’s why I recommend his book wherein he describes the limits of evolution evident in probably the most widely studied organism in history (other than the human organism) the parasite responsible for malaria. I don’t recommend anything that questions common descent with the exception of John Sanford, a Cornell geneticist and inventor of The Gene Gun, who is a Young Earth Creationist. His book, Genetic Entropy, raises and discusses a valid mystery which is how a few cell lines have managed to survive billions of years when the rule is that most of them go extinct through the normal course of moving from lower to higher entropy. Sanford tries to make the case that no eucharyote genome could defy entropy for even millions of years to make a case for complex genomes only being on the order of 10,000 years old. I disagree with the time frame but agree there’s a mystery in how a few genomes manage to dodge the bullet of rising entropy. The average duration of species is about 10 million years. If nothing else gets them first entropy will erode their genomes with enough junk that they die out that way. Yet there are exceptions with some species surviving relatively unblemished for hundreds of millions of years. Something seems to protect those genomes from the ravages of random mutation that doom the vast majority. My own hypothesis is that there are fundamental genomes that don’t evolve and serve as a fallback when evolution via random mutation eventually goes awry. So Sanford’s book is filled with vital information on genetic descent with modification and if you ignore the short time frame and think million of years instead of thousands it has merit to it. He’s the only exception I can think of to my rule of not giving much time to young earth creationists.

Yes.
And I look forward to Strasbourg in June when we will be presenting the first electrocarbon samples off the pilot line. Developing a fundamentally better material by revising what was basically a wrong understanding about some of the double layer physics has been an interesting experience.

Judith, you write “Because of the complexity of the climate system, there is heavy reliance on the judgment of experts. ”

Precisely. And that is where you, and all the other advocates of CAGW are at fault. In science there must be NO reliance on the judgement of experts. The only thing we can be certain of, in physics, is the hard, measured, empirical data. “To the solid ground of Nature, Trusts the mind that builds for aye ” William Wordsworth. It has been the reliance on expert judgement that has led the learned sciencific organizations, in support of CAGW, into the sorry state that physics is in today.

Yes Steven. Many years ago there was a wonderful scientific publication called Nature. When I was at college, I used to rush over to the library the day the new addition appeared, and read it religiously. Sadly, it has gone downhill in recent years. That quotation appeared in a prominent place on the front cover. I read it over 60 years ago, and can still quote it by heart.

Here is what your poet says about the relationship between Mind and Nature

“Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,–both what they half create,
And what perceive;”

(durr.. one of my specialiaties used to be epistemology in poetry.)

Wordsworth would not agree that there was an objective reality independent of human consciousness.. think of it as a mis reading of Kant..

or go read “The Prelude” and you’ll soon figure out that Nature magazine knew nothing about Wordworth’s concept of nature when they used his quote.

1. Oversimplifying a complex problem, and drawing highly confident conclusions from the simplified analysis.
—–
The variation on this that I see in the climate is usually wrapped in the claim that the argument is from “basic physics”, and therefore impregnable. It’s possible for an oversimplified model to be based on rigorous physics, and still be wrong, because it’s incomplete.

It’s sort of like the difference between the ‘truth’ and the ‘whole truth’. There’s a reason why witnesses in court have to swear to tell the ‘truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’. The truth by itself is insufficient.

For instance, certain types of salespeople are required by law to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. They are not required to tell the whole truth, and therein lies a world of difference.
===============================

I don’t know that you can address the issue of intellectual honesty without also addressing the related issue of the null hypothesis. Unless the most basic of issues can be settled at the beginning – what is the default assumption absent any evidence – the rest of it doesn’t matter.

What is wrong with these estimates of climate sensitivity?
We take the GISS global temperature and plot them against the log of Keelings atmospheric [CO2].

The slope of the plot allows us to state we are about 1.15 degrees warmer that the per-Industrial temperature and that at 560 ppm we will be at 1.2 degrees warmer than at present. The total change we would have for a doubling of CO2 is about 2.4 degrees.

When will we hit 560 ppm atmospheric CO2?
Atmospheric CO2 rises as an exponential in the post-industrial age, and as the worse case scenario we assume that humans burn fossil fuels in the future in the same manner has they have done in the past.
We take the slope of time vs., Log[CO2] using the data from 1982-2012, the thirty years beloved of two 15 year periods.

Hindcasting gives us a per-Industrial date of about 1940 and from forecasting we get 2087 as the date when we reach 2*[CO2]. This is the absolute worst case of human atmospheric modification.

Now we have 75 years to wait for 1.22 degrees. This is 0.16 degrees a decade.

I think that we can live with that without reshaping the worlds economy and giving power over energy use to unelected bodies.

ESTIMATE so no look squirrel.
No mentioning ‘Equilibrium’ in an oscillating system.

DocMartyn, I think your estimate of CO2 growth is on the low end. It assumes that todays rate will continue through 2087, that is 2 ppm per year. Given a growth in world population of up tom 50%, this is in real terms a 33% reduction in per capita carbon. This may be achievable with policies, but I don’t think you are advocating those policies. The global average is 5 tonnes of carbon per capita, Europe is more like 10, and the US is near 20. A conservative estimate from global development would raise the global average carbon footprint by 50%, which together with 50% population growth results in a doubling of the annual output to raise CO2 4 ppm per year by 2100. accounting for this unmitigated growth we would probably average 3 ppm through 2100 putting us between 650 and 700 ppm by then.

If European countries stopped shutting down their nuclear plants and replacing them with coal, and if Europe allowed drilling for shale gas, and if China ramped up shale gas consumption and Japan replaced their coal plants with methane hydrate power plants, the CO2 growth would approach 0.

All of the above is possible within 5 years.

But professional environmentalists are trying to stop the switch from coal to NG because they would go out of business.

Sunshine, I think most would agree that complete stopping of coal burning would be an effective policy. Will it happen? No, because there is too much left and it is still cheap without being taxed or incentivized against.

Continue the fight against coal, sunshine. That is the one thing we agree on. The world would be a better place if that alone could be achieved because a large percentage of carbon in the ground is in that form and it is best to leave it there.

I think DocMartyn did a good job with this. The GISS is a land+ocean data set and so anything derived from this leans to a transient estimate. DocMartyn gets a 2.37C change for doubling of CO2.

About half the heat is entering the ocean without leading to an immediate temperature rise, so that with 70% of the surface covered by ocean, we can pro-rate the eventual temperature change.
2.37 = 0.7*(1/2)*dT + 0.3*dT

Solving for dT, the equilibrium climate sensitivity is approximately 3.6C for doubling of CO2.

dT =2.37/0.65 = 3.65

This is above the mean estimate of 3C that most climate models have been converging to.

Sunshine.
Natural Gas beats Coal in fewer GHG emissions as long as extraction leakage rate of NG is below 3.2%. The US EPA says it is at 2.4% but a study from earlier this year says it is 4% and perhaps as high as 9%.

The problem with fracking is that it is hard to perfect the collection of NG. Obviously some of the methane escapes as a potent greenhouse gas, creating a high transient effect before the CH4 decomposes to CO2 and H2O.

“The slope of the plot allows us to state we are about 1.15 degrees warmer that the per-Industrial temperature and that at 560 ppm we will be at 1.2 degrees warmer than at present. The total change we would have for a doubling of CO2 is about 2.4 degrees.”

Good ballpark estimate. I used to play this game with my engineers.
Estimate how many passengers take off/land from Ohare. Man they hated that. They all wanted a perfect answer.. ( straight A itis ) and some would actually refuse to play because they didnt want to say 60 million because they knew the truth had to be something like 66,663,503 and they didnt want to get the “wrong” answer.

So, if that is the right ballpark, then please predict the increase between today’s concentration of CO2 and 560 ppm in 10 ppm steps please. Lets see how accurate you are. Or is it a simple straight line?

k scott denison | April 20, 2013 at 8:39 pm |
Classic! Estimating climate is just as easy as estimating passengers at O’Hare!
################
boy you violated a bunch of rulz about intellectual honesty there. The point is that there are a certain class of folks who abhor saying 60 million when the actual answer is 60 million and 1, even when perfection is not required. The point was not to compare the two. Having said that, yes, estimating the sensitivity ( not the climate.. he was talking about a metric of the climate not climate itself) is as easy as you want to make it. Please dont confuse estimating a METRIC of a system with estimating the climate, a phrase which doesnt make much sense.
###################

#################
k scott denison | April 20, 2013 at 8:41 pm |
So, if that is the right ballpark, then please predict the increase between today’s concentration of CO2 and 560 ppm in 10 ppm steps please. Lets see how accurate you are. Or is it a simple straight line?

Did I say right ballpark? I said it was a good ballpark estimate. There is a difference, but never mind. Now you want a prediction from todays
concentration at say 400 ppm to 560 ppm. wow, that’s not even climate science. We will hit 560 sometime between 2060 and 2100. or maybe not at all. big unknowns, very hard to be accurate.. one reason you want to move away from fossil fuels as quickly as practical.. What you can say is that Hitting 560 will not be risk free whenever it happens, so get yourself off that path as soon as practical.

Steve it works really well until people do the ‘half the heat is hiding in the oceans’. trick.
Things like that piss me off.
The answer to your question is that no passengers take off or land at O’Hare. Passenger aircraft do, but passengers are unable to fly.

Before I ever go to trial, I try to put myself in the place of my opponent, and make the arguments he would make against my evidence. Done properly, it forces you to look at the weaknesses of your own case, and the strengths of your opponent’s. I can assure you this is not the norm in my profession, and that is a shame.

The best test of whether you can engage in critical analysis is whether you can state your opponent’s argument fully and fairly. There is not a CAGW advocate that I have ever seen that can do this. The best they have is the SkepticalScience practice of straw men arguments. They do not understand skeptical arguments because they have taught to think critically only of their opponents’ arguments.

There is nothing wrong with rhetoric and propaganda in a policy debate. Those are neutral words in the context of policy discourse. The issue is the integrity of your discourse. Intellectual honesty before you speak makes intellectual honesty when you speak…easy.

We spent 9 months fighting for someones life, growing his cancer cells in vitro and trying different drug combinations.
I was at his autopsy this morning.
I walk with failure to understand complex systems all the time. I know that nothing I know is completely true and that many things I believe to be false are not.

As long as you’re doing it in vitro put DCA on the list of assaults to the cancer cells. One more culture doesn’t seem like a lot of extra effort. If it works you can prescribe it off-label and if it doesn’t work you took hardly any risk to find out. Excellent risk/reward ratio.

GaryM, Skeptical Science does far worse than use straw man arguments. They also intentionally engage in deceptive moderation practices to distort discussions. A recent example can be found here where a moderator leveled a false accusation against me to justify moderation. He then deleted my comment responding to SKS regulars, and he deleted an additional comment that drew attention to his obvious misrepresentation of the SKS comments policy.

I didn’t get a screenshot of my comments this time because my browser crashed, but it’s pretty obvious what the moderator is doing. And if anyone isn’t convinced, I can provide other examples. I can provide examples of SKS moderating comments that didn’t break any of their rules while outright refusing to moderate comments that do break their rules. Of course, the rule-breakers they refuse to moderate all support their “side.”

And that sort of behavior characterizes the alarmist side of the global warming debate. It’s seen in SKS, RealClimate and many other internet sources. It’s seen in scientists like Lewandowsky et al, Michael Mann, and pretty much everyone on the Hockey Stick team. It’s even seen in scientific journals and the IPCC.

The public face of global warming science constantly relies on this sort of pathetic behavior. The non-public face of it may not like the behavior, but it does little, if anything, to combat it.

That is why it is impossible for there to be a legitimate public discussion of global warming.

Bad Andrew, it could go down, but either sun would be doing something quite noticeable or a large volcano would be the obvious cause, and nobody would be arguing about the cause because the observations can pinpoint causes quite well already and are only getting better.

Yes there certainly is IR absorption by CO2. Millions and millions of CO2 sensors that control ventilation systems in high occupancy buildings work by shining IR light through a hermetically sealed sample of known CO2 concentration and a sample of ambient air with unknown CO2 level. The light filtered by the two samples are compared for total energy and the difference from the reference sample tells you how much CO2 is in the test sample. The CO2 in both samples absorbs some of the IR and ref-emits it back at the source. The more CO2 the less light emerges from the output end of the sample container.

It’s totally pointless to ask for such lists, as nothing happens in vacuo.

The real questions concern the strength and consequences of warming taking all available information into account. It’s not possible to list the criteria ahead of time, because there are so many variables that some others of them may change totally the relevance of any prefixed criteria.

You have to give a precise definition of Global Warming to make this even an answerable question. Do you mean the idea that doubling CO2, everything else equal, causes the long-term effect of a temperature rise in excess of 2 C?

The ideas I believe in go back a hundred years to Arrhenius, that doubling CO2 causes about 1 C of warming, and that given time the ocean warms by 1 C and that maintains the relative humidity by increasing atmospheric water vapor about 7%, which causes the water vapor feedback to more than double the CO2 effect. The water vapor feedback is the largest one, followed by the ice albedo feedback. What could happen to disrupt this chain of ideas? It is based so much on basic physics, I don’t know. Not only that, but paleoclimate independently supports the idea that warmer conditions prevail with higher CO2 amounts. So all these paleoclimate findings would need to be somehow reversed too.

“An analysis of NASA satellite data shows that water vapor, the most important greenhouse gas, has declined in the upper atmosphere causing a cooling effect that is 16 times greater than the warming effect from man-made greenhouse gas emissions during the period 1990 to 2001.”

Some “skeptics”, I find, are just impatient. They need all of the feedback effects to be seen yesterday otherwise they won’t think they are at all possible in the future. Of course the ocean takes a while to warm up to where this feedback occurs. It is not called equilibrium for nothing. The tropical ocean responds quite slowly and that is where most of the water vapor will come from. Give it time.

sunshine, the problem with climate is it changes slowly, actually imperceptibly on short time scales. We can see it is warmer now than 50 years ago, however, so it is changing in the expected way if you are not too shortsighted when looking at it.

I think 1910-1940 is half explained by a solar increase from its minimum in 1910. The other half would be CO2. Being intellectually honest, would you entirely rule out a solar effect? Then with the sun not strengthening, we can’t explain the later increase that way, but the pause may be because the latest solar max appears to be the weakest in at least a century, don’t you agree?

sunshine, OK, since you believe in sulphates and solar effects, the pause is explainable by a combination of negative effects of solar reduction in cycle 24, increase in sulphates from new Chinese coal plants, and a negative PDO, all of which would have cooled the earth, but somehow it didn’t cool at all, and some aspects keep indicating a warming rate.

List what information presented to you could cause you to disbelieve in Global Warming. This is a scientific question so be specific.

Andrew

##################################

1. evidence which shows the increase in GHGs is not due to humans.
2. Evidence which showed that RTE are wrong ( for example if C02 suddenly became transparent to outgoing LWR.
3. A pause exceeding 25 years ( with no volcanos or dramatic changes
in other forcings ) would make me change my view about sensitivity.
4. A statistically significant cooling regime whilst all external forcing
increased.

If generating the Mandelbrot set by graphing pixels, one could take this approach too: put all pixels black; if the pixel contains a point in the Mandelbrot set, give it a color value; if a pixel contains a point not in the Mandelbrot set, put the pixel to black.

Inevitably you will end up with a pure black graph. There are infinite points in the near neighborhood of a point in the Mandelbrot Set that are not in the Set themselves.

Inference, inductive reasoning, doesn’t rely on all evidence. It relies on relevant evidence.

It’s impossible to know without first completing the inferential process whether evidence supports or undermines the conclusion; evidence doesn’t belong to any cause.

I like your #2. Could also be stated as the Cosmological Constant changed, or Planck Length became a variable quantity, etc.

Why 25 years? And only one pause? I mean, there was a 25 year pause between 1940 and 1970ish.. so you mean a second 25 year pause? Why two 25 year pauses? Is it arbitrary, gut, Bayesian, what?

And wouldn’t your #4 imply either (a) all Mathematics is wrong; or, (b) there’s an unmeasured (internal or external) forcing?

Mr. Mosher – I should probably know this, but don’t. What do you believe the climate sensitivity to be?
Do you fully understand the feedbacks, or does your belief stem primarily from empirical data, like Vostok ice cores for example.

FYI 25 years of no warming is WAY THE F*CK (technical term) improbable according to climate models with CO2 increasing at the present rate. 15 years in fact is already below the lower edge of the 95% confidence bound. It happened before due to natural variation but should be exceedingly rare now is how the narrative goes. If it happens again that means CO2 warming is much less than expected.

To further Harold’s question: what is,the physical basis for your 25 year time frame? Which mechanisms lead you to know that cooling for 25 years while CO2 increases would invalidate your theory? Why not 23 years? Or 26 years? Why a multiple of 5? Does the earths cycles operate only in multiples of 5? 25? 12.5?

The HADCRUT3 series shows a pause of > 25 years starting just after 1940, why didn’t that count?

i’m interested in why you pick 25 years? NOAA put it at 15 years in their 2008 report. The 15 years is now up, so by NOAA’s yardstick we have a result. Could it be that you want the result deferred by another decade?

“jim2 | April 20, 2013 at 4:40 pm |
Mr. Mosher – I should probably know this, but don’t. What do you believe the climate sensitivity to be?
Do you fully understand the feedbacks, or does your belief stem primarily from empirical data, like Vostok ice cores for example.”

###################
Well, first off I would say that sensitivity is a low dimensional metric for a high dimensional system. But, it’s probably the best metric we have..

I put my belief in terms of an over/under bet. Given a sensitivity of 3C to a doubling of C02 ( say lambda = .75C/WattsM^2) I would take the under bet. or 51% of the PDF falls below 3C.

Why? do I think that? Hansens paleo guesses, and every serious look at the problem.. durr.. read the papers referenced in ar4 and 5.

I dont consider Vostok to be empirical data. I don’t consider any evidence to be “empirical” in the sense that you might

“Instead of reductionism, Quine proposes that it is the whole field of science and not single statements that are verified. All scientific statements are interconnected. Logical laws give the relation between different statements, while they also are statements of the system. This makes talk about the empirical content of a single statement misleading. It also becomes impossible to draw a line between synthetic statements, which depend on experience, and analytic statements, that hold come what may. Any statement can be held as necessarily true according to Quine, if the right changes are made somewhere else in the system. In the same way, no statements are immune to revision.
Even logical laws can be revised according to Quine. Quantum logic, introduced by Garrett Birkhoff and John von Neumann, abandons the law of distributivity from classical logic in order to reconcile some of the apparent inconsistencies of classical Boolean logic with the facts related to measurement and observation in quantum mechanics. Quine makes the case that the empirical study of physics has furnished apparently credible grounds for replacing classical logic by quantum logic, rather as Newtonian physics gave way to Einsteinian physics. The idea that logical laws are not immune to revision in the light of empirical evidence has provoked an intense debate (see Is logic empirical?).
According to Quine, there are two different results of his reasoning. The first is a blurring of the line between metaphysics and natural science. The common-sense theory about physical objects is epistemologically comparable to the gods of Homer. Quine is a Physicalist, in the sense that he considers it a scientific error not to adopt a theory which makes reference to physical objects. However, like Gods of Homer, physical objects are posits, and there is no great epistemic difference in kind; the difference is rather that the theory of physical objects has turned out to be a more efficient theory. As Quine states in Two Dogmas, “The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience”.

It would appear Quine has over-thought science. Sure, many things in science are interconnected, but that does not mean there aren’t parts that are independently testable. Frankly, the thoughts on science you quoted sound like BS.

“jim2 | April 20, 2013 at 10:18 pm |
It would appear Quine has over-thought science. Sure, many things in science are interconnected, but that does not mean there aren’t parts that are independently testable. Frankly, the thoughts on science you quoted sound like BS.”

“The predicament Duhem here identifies is no rainy day puzzle for philosophers of science, but a methodological challenge that constantly arises in the course of scientific practice itself. It is simply not true that for practical purposes and in concrete contexts a single revision of our beliefs in response to disconfirming evidence is always obviously correct, or the most promising, or the only or even most sensible avenue to pursue. To cite a classic example, when Newton’s celestial mechanics failed to correctly predict the orbit of Uranus, scientists at the time did not simply abandon the theory but protected it from refutation by instead challenging the background assumption that the solar system contained only seven planets. This strategy bore fruit, notwithstanding the falsity of Newton’s theory: by calculating the location of a hypothetical eighth planet influencing the orbit of Uranus, the astronomers Adams and Leverrier were eventually led to discover Neptune in 1846. But the very same strategy failed when used to try to explain the advance of the perihelion in Mercury’s orbit by postulating the existence of “Vulcan”, an additional planet located between Mercury and the sun, and this phenomenon would resist satisfactory explanation until the arrival of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. So it seems that Duhem was right to suggest not only that hypotheses must be tested as a group or a collection, but also that it is by no means a foregone conclusion which member of such a collection should be abandoned or revised in response to a failed empirical test or false implication. Indeed, this very example illustrates why Duhem’s own rather hopeful appeal to the ‘good sense’ of scientists themselves in deciding when a given hypothesis ought to be abandoned promises very little if any relief from the general predicament of holist underdetermination.”

Mr. Mosher – You appear as a dog chasing its tail. The fact that we can’t measure or observe certain attributes in the micro-world does not somehow imply that all measurements and observations are useless. The fact that theory must b employed to make and interpret measurements does not render the empirical evidence useless. You are welcomed to classify measurement and observation empirical or not, but that hasn’t prevented scientists from making them. It hasn’t prevented funding for such endeavors. It looks to me like you are just muddying the waters because you don’t have enough evidence to make your case for the sensitivity you believe to actually exist – or do you not believe in existence either?

“Mr. Mosher – You appear as a dog chasing its tail. The fact that we can’t measure or observe certain attributes in the micro-world does not somehow imply that all measurements and observations are useless. ”

###############
1. that was not the argument. The argument started with your
singling out Vostok as if it had some sort of special status.
I indicated that your notion of “empirical” wasnt going to
to be something that would find much traction with me.
2. You made the unwise claim that a theory could be isolated
from the rest of physics to be tested.
3. I supplied you with some reading material so you could un fool yourself.

At NO TIME during this argument have I held that all observations are useless QUITE THE OPPOSITE.

“The fact that theory must b employed to make and interpret measurements does not render the empirical evidence useless. You are welcomed to classify measurement and observation empirical or not, but that hasn’t prevented scientists from making them.”

You miss the point entirely. The point is NOT that “observation” is useless. That is NOT what I am arguing. You obviously dont get Quine.
The DOGMA you believe in is that there are Observations over here and Theory over there.. That the two can be separated cleanly. and that observations always win when observation and theory come into conflict. The point is this: observation is shot through with theory. You dont simply have observation over here and theory over there. So I want to make clear to you before you try to argue that “empirical evidence” has some kind of priority, that it does not have an absolute priority because it is shot through with theory”

Mr. Mosher: Evidently you didn’t read my last post. If you had, you would realize that I don’t, in fact, strictly separate theory and observation. Nevertheless, observation – even with the caveat that theory is necessary for measurement and interpretation – STILL trumps theory.
How can this be, you ask?
Concepts, to include theory, are a physical realization in a physical brain. Concepts do not exist independently outside the physical realm. As has been, excuse the term, observed, brains throughout the ages have generated concepts that have no correlation to the physical world. In fact, most concepts generated by brains are worthless WRT science. Therefore, our guide to which concepts are worthy and which are not is observation. Therefore, observation DOES play a central and unique role in science. Theory, i.e. concepts, are all over the map without observation.

“More or less everyone, relativist or non-relativist, agrees that ‘theories are underdetermined’ in some sense or other; but the seeming agreement about that formula disguises a dangerously wide variety of different meanings.”

Laudan goes on to make these distinctions in ways that I think would please Mosher while helping Mosher understand why he sometimes sounds like an epistemological relativist (even though he clearly is not). The Duhem-Quine thesis has become a refuge of what might be called “science deniers” or “epistemological egalitarians,” partly because Quine equivocated a lot about exactly what he was saying, sometimes seeming to believe that all theories were always equally supported by the evidence. The muzzle flashes from unleashing the DQ artillery may seem to locate one on a hill one does not wish to defend.

Seen over the past century and a half there is no question that our planet has warmed, so “Global Warming” (itself) is “real”.

But if the question is

What would it take for you to conclude that human GHG emissions are not the principal driver of our climate and that there is, thus, no real potential threat to humanity or our environment from man-made global warming?

(IOW what would it take in your mind to falsify the CAGW premise as outlined by IPCC in AR4?)

The answer (for anyone who truly hasn’t decided yet would be

If human emissions of CO2 and other GHGs continue unabated, with concentrations continuing to reach record levels over a period of another decade or two, at the same time that the “globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature anomaly” continues to decline slightly.

Those who have already decided that AGW poses no real potential threat might pick a shorter time frame or say their viewpoint has already been proven by the current pause.

Those who have already decided that AGW does pose a real potential threat might pick a longer time frame or even try rationalizing away the lack of warming as a result of other unforeseen factors while maintaining the notion that human GHG emissions are still the principal driver of our future climate.

A nice intention is represented here; sadly with so many debatable cures and debatable identification of symptoms that it is immediately hamstrung by being too ambitious for its own merits.

The list focuses blame on writers, placing no burden on readers to READ HARDER.

It emphasizes doubt and uncertainty, suspicion and undermining the process of reaching conclusions.

It panders.

It incidentally insults.

It coyly polarizes without providing a valid means to reach mutually agreeable outcomes.

And it places political correctness above correctness, expressing an attitude that prefers niceness over sincerity.

1. Do not overstate the power of your argument. One’s sense of conviction should be in proportion to the level of clear evidence assessable by most. If someone portrays their opponents as being either stupid or dishonest for disagreeing, intellectual dishonesty is probably in play. Intellectual honesty is most often associated with humility, not arrogance.

Meaningless gibberish. How often to people read anyone saying, “my argument is the most powerful argument evah, and could never ever be unseated by any means because it is so eternal and great and good and solid..” and don’t immediately undermine their case with properly skeptical readers when they do so?

Rather, wouldn’t it be better to acknowledge that argument is an adversarial process: in the debate between the writer and the reader, is not every writer going after the win in the field of the reader’s mind?

Indeed, one of the most commonplace tools of people countering strong arguments is to end-run the power by accusing the writer of overstating the strength of their case even if the writer assiduously avoids making any claims of power at all, or even if the writer specifically and clearly states specific limits on the strength of their case.

One’s conveyed sense of conviction ought be irrelevant to any reader at all. Who cares about the personality or feelings of the writer, ever, in matters of ideas, fact and evidence? Ought not that clear evidence be made so assessible as practical — indeed it is adverse to the spirit of science, though too commonplace in its practice, to hide some evidence or method and jealously guard access for patently invalid reasons — to the intended audience and beyond, and that audience bear the burden for examining the provided evidence and seeking and providing more evidence (for or against) by such means as they possess?

What good does it do a writer to /mixed metaphor mode on/ do all the work and hand it down as if from the Mount, and get nothing back from readers? The readers ought run with the ball, move the ideas further along the field if persuaded, or defend against it especially if too easily persuaded by digging deeper on new, fertile ground? /mixed metaphor mode off/

If some writer portrays their opponents as being stupid or dishonest for disagreeing, it should be ignored by readers: who cares what the writer thinks of other people based on vanity or fear of contradiction?

How does ad hom affect facts, evidence or ideas?

If ignoring entirely the ad hom portion of writing leaves nothing to discuss, or only a weak case, then the writer has done the argument no good.

However, where dishonesty is apparent not because of the disagreement but because of clear and valid evidence of dishonesty, how is it then off the table to discuss it in an honest and open forum?

If something being read sounds stupid, why not say so? Often the ‘sounds stupid’ is due a failure to communicate on either or both sides. While it would be more efficient to identify such cases by saying, “I think we’re having a failure to communicate, could you explain again what you mean?” or some such, if readers of goodwill are engaging a writer, then any plea for better understanding, up to “what an incompetent idiot that guy is, he’s a stupid doodoo brain,” shouldn’t be suppressed.

After all, wouldn’t it be better to admit to a failure of communication by blunt and honest expression of one’s sense of the exchange, than to pretend the communication were successful and let it pass?

It appears the term “intellectual honesty” means more the opposite, in this sense, and by “humility” what is intended is disengagement, while arrogance appears to be the way willingness to engage is portrayed.

“1. Do not overstate the power of your argument. One’s sense of conviction should be in proportion to the level of clear evidence assessable by most. If someone portrays their opponents as being either stupid or dishonest for disagreeing, intellectual dishonesty is probably in play. Intellectual honesty is most often associated with humility, not arrogance.

2. Show a willingness to publicly acknowledge that reasonable alternative viewpoints exist. The alternative views do not have to be treated as equally valid or powerful, but rarely is it the case that one and only one viewpoint has a complete monopoly on reason and evidence.

It’s pretty presumptuous to acknowledge that a viewpoint someone doesn’t understand is reasonable before completely engaging in coming to an understanding of it. One might even call it arrogant.

While generally “reasonable alternative viewpoints exist” (what a bizarre way to say nothing at all).

This is simply a patent excuse for fingoism. We know from hard experience that it is an inherently wrong approach to finding reasonable other viewpoints.

Far better to acknowledge that the process of finding the best reasonable viewpoint is never over, but that there will often be a best reasonable viewpoint produced by the parsimonious, simplifying, universal, accurate and nearly true method of science. (If science is the field.)

Other views can be views. There’s nothing wrong with people holding views: that’s a natural and normal step in forming conclusions. Elevating all views to equality, especially when their cases are weaker or less valid, doesn’t fight the monopoly of one fixed view: it creates a monopoly of inferior understanding.

No conclusion has a monopoly on evidence: evidence belongs to all valid viewpoints. No conclusion has a monopoly on reason: reason belongs to all rationale. This using of the devil word ‘monopoly’ seeks to slander the ability of reason and evidence to support best hypotheses.

” Elevating all views to equality, especially when their cases are weaker or less valid, doesn’t fight the monopoly of one fixed view: it creates a monopoly of inferior understanding.”

The claim was not that other EQUALLY REASONABLE views exist. The virtue extolled was “PUBLICALLY acknowledging that other reasonable positions exist.” I’ll give you a perfect example. Try to argue with somefolks that the sensitivity is more likely to be less than 3C rather than more than 3C and they will refuse to accept that this position is reasonable. They will call this scientific position a “false flag”,, mumble crap about overtons window, they will count publications, attack pedigrees, say if it’s true, it doesnt matter. They will lump you in with nutjobs who deny all physics..

I’ll give you another example.. I get mail. I get mail from guys who publically refuse to acknowledge that there is a different reasonable view of the MWP. Privately they slag Mann’s work.

But then only his sycophants could read it. I suggest putting it on the mirror in his bathroom and the one nearest his office at Penn State where, judging by both physique and personality, he should see it a great many times every single day.

3. Be willing to publicly acknowledge and question one’s own assumptions and biases. All of us rely on assumptions when applying our world view to make sense of the data about the world. And all of us bring various biases to the table.

This sounds pretty good. It’s doomed to failure, but it sounds good.

Explicit statement of relevant assumptions is great, and greatly assists in inference or deduction. However, we can never be certain except in nearly trivial cases that all assumptions have been made explicit, and must admit the possibility our argument is founded on a weak or illegitimate assumption we have not yet uncovered.

And is bias really news to anyone? Confirmation bias, pious fraud, invincible ignorance.. a platitude about willingness is not going to address these and other problems of bias by itself. Something more vigorous and diligent is needed. In this case the nice is the enemy of the necessary.

“However, we can never be certain except in nearly trivial cases that all assumptions have been made explicit, and must admit the possibility our argument is founded on a weak or illegitimate assumption we have not yet uncovered.”

The claim was not that ALL assumptions be made explicit. You’ve mischaracterized the argument. Hmm that violates rule 8 I think

you made no such argument. Further, the rule talks about the willingness to publically recognize and acknowledge ones assumptions,
.

It does not state that you have to explain all your assumptions. It does not state that you have to explain ANY assumption whatsoever. And if you point out an assumption to me that I have not acknowledged and I refuse to recognize it as an assumption, well then the rule applies.

I’ll have to make a note that what I thought I’d led people to in my writing did not get them all the way there for them, and I’ve left too much burden to think for themselves on the reader.

Though I agree, if I’d said ‘doomed to complete failure every time’, I’d be overstating the case. Some of the time will fail enough that we’d have hoped for better wording, or at least for the original author to have pointed out this weakness.

Oddly, I find people who advertise their real names too readily accused of arrogance or self-aggrandizement, to deflect discussion and debate away from ideas, evidence and science and into personalities.

It’s the hallmark of intellectual dishonesty to divert the topic repeatedly and insistently into inconsequentiality, don’t you find?

Joshua, he is not attacking the person. He is saying that he does not give the same amount of trust to a anonymous writer as he does to named writer. You have to acknowledge that this is a reasonable position. please dont mispresent his argument.

Does the fact that you know my name make me more trustworthy? Any less of a nobody? Nope. I’m just the same ol’ un-trustworthy nobody I always was, Steven. Since we’re in agreement on that, maybe you’ll stop focusing on me, personally, as much as you do?

I have faith that you can change, steven, because I know your name and that means you are a trustworthy somebody.

4. Be willing to publicly acknowledge where your argument is weak. Almost all arguments have weak spots, but those who are trying to sell an ideology will have great difficulty with this point and would rather obscure or downplay any weak points.

If you’re a great writer, with the time to ponder and edit and re-examine your argument for every weakness (see #3 about assumptions and biases) so far as you can, then it’s great if you acknowledge these weaknesses.

Especially, it’s a known method of rhetoric to acknowledge and dismiss weaknesses that, if identified by an opponent, would otherwise doom a case.

Who hasn’t heard the phrase, “..now, my opponent will doubtless point out that ..” followed by some straw man that deflates the opponent in the eyes of readers, but so subtly as to fool some readers?

Better, more honest, to acknowledge weaknesses only after objections have been raised, unless one honestly knows the weakness and its answer to be so patent and urgent that it must be addressed.

Argument is adversarial. Playing down weak points will happen as a matter of human nature; we all subconsciously downplay losing points, and coddle feeble or undeveloped views. The adversarial process of argument helps throw a clear light on this far better than self-reflection; not that self-reflection ought be avoided by some who apparently never do. You know who you are. (Wait, likely not.)

The team fails both version of this in such a spectacular fashion as to boggle the mind.

Lol!

1. Do not overstate the power of your argument.
2. Show a willingness to publicly acknowledge that reasonable alternative viewpoints exist.
3. Be willing to publicly acknowledge and question one’s own assumptions and biases.
7. Address the argument instead of attacking the person making the argument.
9. Show a commitment to critical thinking.

I find the focus on doing this or that publicly rather an odd aspect of this perspective. If you are relying on the threat of being public to somehow strengthen these goals, you are chasing your tail. In fact, I’d say that the focus on what is or isn’t public to likely be counterproductive from the standpoint of applying these principles.

The process of intellectual honesty is an internal and introspective process. Certainly, external input his helpful in that regard – but you’re only open to that external input if you’ve laid the necessary groundwork internally.

Essentially, I think this approach is putting the cart before the horse.

“The process of intellectual honesty is an internal and introspective process. Certainly, external input his helpful in that regard – but you’re only open to that external input if you’ve laid the necessary groundwork internally.

Essentially, I think this approach is putting the cart before the horse.”

huh? I first think you have to admit that there is a reasonable position that intellectual honesty is a public act rather than a private act. That the easiest person to fool is yourself. Lets put it this way, if you are intellectually dishonest you cant lay the necessary ground work internally.

The first and most important rule of intellectual honesty in debate, IMO, is to be able to accurately state the perspective of those you disagree with – to their satisfaction.

If you twist their perspective in order to support your own thesis, then you are engaging in intellectual dishonesty. If you aren’t fully comprehensive in articulating their argument, then you are, in effect, engaging in intellectual dishonesty.

8. When addressing an argument, do not misrepresent it. A common tactic of the intellectually dishonest is to portray their opponent’s argument in straw man terms. In politics, this is called spin. Typically, such tactics eschew quoting the person in context, but instead rely heavily on out-of-context quotes, paraphrasing and impression. When addressing an argument, one should shows signs of having made a serious effort to first understand the argument and then accurately represent it in its strongest form.

So I would make #8, #1. And raise it to an entirely different level of hierarchy above the others.

But “showing signs of having made a serious effort” is not sufficient, IMO. You need to make certain that the person you’re arguing with agrees that your representation of their views is accurate and fully comprehensive.

Of course, there is a problem if your opponent will not be honest in accepting a good faith and accurate and comprehensive representation of their views. But making that determination is extremely problematic, and is fraught with very subjectively-biased reasoning; that is why you need to make every effort possible to gain their approval of how you represent their views.

I agree that No 8 is more far reaching and important. The problem with many commenters is that they consider the art of communication is merely the presentation of their POV AT their audience and by not understanding the it is a two-way process.

He assiduously attempts to marginalise assigns people he disagrees with on pissant progressive political grounds to psycho-babble categories. I suggest on the evidence that blatant hypocrisy and disingenuous psycho babble is the order of the day.

‘Of course, there is a problem if your opponent will not be honest in accepting a good faith and accurate and comprehensive representation of their views.’ We will decide what is in good faith says Joshua and if you object to categorisation it will be grounds for further sub-categorisation. The problem with Joshua is that good faith is not his objective.

Just attempting an honest and good faith interpretation of your views Joshua. You are politically inspired in some pissant progressive sense and as such there is no possibility that the cultural divide can ever be broached. You are a barbarian inside the gates of the citadel of progress and enlightenment. Your objective is to marginalise what you see as libertarians and conservatives in the service of a progressive utopian fantasy. Your tools are psychobabble and trivial distraction. The overall impression is one of repetitive and smarmy snark. You have no science and little couth.

But Joshua – it is what I believe and for good reason. So it can hardly be dishonesty. I have said a number of times that the views of pissant progressives are both silly and marginal in the broad sweep of history – you are irrelevant to major currents shaping the future and are incapable of growing and changing. So it is to other people I am talking to – and from others responses to you I can tell they agree with me. If you don’t agree you are simply showing bad faith.

5. Be willing to publicly acknowledge when you are wrong. Those selling an ideology likewise have great difficulty admitting to being wrong, as this undercuts the rhetoric and image that is being sold. You get small points for admitting to being wrong on trivial matters and big points for admitting to being wrong on substantive points. You lose big points for failing to admit being wrong on something trivial.

Aw. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if everyone acknowledged when they were wrong? But wait.. what _exactly_ would this achieve, really?

Should we set as our goal that past writers must mea culpa and apologize and say they’re sorry and grovel a bit where they’ve disagreed with us?

Doesn’t this describe vendetta, rather than productive discourse?

We know all people — not just those selling an ideology (and who isn’t selling an ideology, to be cynically blunt?) — have great difficulty admitting to being wrong.. which admission does not undercut rhetoric or image or sales, as marketers well know.

Admitting wrongs, even carefully constructed right wrongs, generally tends to increase the credibility of personalities. And shouldn’t we be talking about ideas, not personalities? Shouldn’t the credibility of each individual case independently be judged solely on its own merits, not on the authority from whom it comes or our emotions about that person?

You get equal points, in general, for all admissions of wrong, great or small. Clever propagandists know this and frequently make small admissions of wrong to glaze over their gaping flaws.

Yet the honest, honorable thing to do, to treat each individual case only on its own merits, is hurt by even the hint by some detractor snidely throwing mud on the source. It’s this very practice that anyone who really values intellectual honesty ought be attacking, and not the reluctance to admit past irrelevant wrongs.

“5. Be willing to publicly acknowledge when you are wrong. Those selling an ideology likewise have great difficulty admitting to being wrong, as this undercuts the rhetoric and image that is being sold. You get small points for admitting to being wrong on trivial matters and big points for admitting to being wrong on substantive points. You lose big points for failing to admit being wrong on something trivial.

Aw. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if everyone acknowledged when they were wrong? But wait.. what _exactly_ would this achieve, really?
##########################

The part you miss here is what happens when people refuse to admit ANY wrong, even wrongs that make no difference. Like admiting that asking people to destroy mails is wrong. Like calling NOAA a fraud is wrong. When someone refuses to admit any wrong, any wrong whatsoever, then I bump them down on the trustworthiness scale. The point is not that admiting wrongs puts people UP on the trustworthiness scale. The point is that refusing to admit any wrong willearn you negative points.

It helps if you try to make the best argument for the other side, rather than misconstruing the position and then attacking it.

Oh, absolutely, people in the throes of irrationality and polarization, whether courteous (as we have many examples here) or antagonistic (as there will invariably be too many examples anywhere) make us feel like trusting them less. Just as we, in the throes of polarization or irrationality trust other people less.

And I say, so what?

I’m far worse off trusting someone (which is also a form of ad hom, and an insidious one) and tempting myself to accept their claims unexamined at face value or contagiously taking on their wrong framing and errors of method because I trust them too much, find them too likeable or reliable or cunning or smart than I am distrusting them, if it means I provide them the best service a reader can for a writer: bringing a new set of eyes to their ideas.

The least trustworthy reader is a too trusting one. All they provide is cheerleading. And any Black Hat Marketer could generate cheerleading with no trouble at all, without the baggage of trust.

The first four points are closely related to requirements I would present for a good scientific paper:

1. Do not overstate the power of your argument.
A scientific paper should not overstate the power of the arguments and empirical data presented in the paper.

2. Show a willingness to publicly acknowledge that reasonable alternative viewpoints exist.
A good scientific paper should tell about the existence of alternative interpretations or theories although necessarily elaborate on them.

3. Be willing to publicly acknowledge and question one’s own assumptions and biases.
Scientists should always pay attention to potential biases, and also acknowledge that they may be influenced by them, if they feel that there’s a significant risk of biases that they cannot e,iminate.

4. Be willing to publicly acknowledge where your argument is weak.
A good scientific paper should tell about the weaknesses in the arguments that the authors know about.

When scientists follow the above approach the paper may appear weaker that it would otherwise, but it’s a great advantage for the authors that they have told about the weaknesses themselves rather than written a paper that will later turn out to be wrong while the authors gave the impression that they were very sure about their conclusions and failed in seeing what they should have seen.

I don’t know about your field Pekka, but mine has a real problem.
Have a look at a paper in Science or Nature, the gold standard by which we are judged, and look at the biologicals. Notice something odd? No loose ends and linear progression of argument. No blind alleys and no huge error bars.
This last one hurts me.
I know that people are getting much tighter distributions in their data than I can ever get. I like to think I am pretty good.
My technician is great and she is a bit of a witch with the cells, but many people report better standard deviations of cell growth in their controls with n’s of 5 or 6 than I get with a n of 8; and i deliberately design my experiments to have as little variation as possible.
It must be that I am crap at what I do, because I can’t ever do quite as well as the people who churn out papers at twice my level of productivity.

I have a suspicion that papers published in Science and Nature are often intellectually less honest than good papers published in the leading journals of a narrower focus.

There’s too much search for instant fame in publishing in Science or Nature and these journals weigh too much the level of attention that the papers are likely to get. Even the scientists may be more tolerant for intellectual dishonesty when they read Nature or Science than they are when they read the most highly valued journals of their own specialty. Science and Nature are not so much platforms for documenting the progress of each field as they are for advertizing some recent results for a wider audience.

Strict limits on the length of the paper may also encourage intellectual dishonesty as such limits may be used as an excuse for leaving out text that full intellectual honesty would require.

I like your wording better than Mike Gene’s; your view is closer to what I think is a workable approach, though DocMartyn’s caution is one of the cases that prompts my own greater caution with Mike Gene’s items 1-6.

It appears your list is far less naive than his, and experienced scientists encounter these cases so often they occassionally simplify their statement of them, as a good scientist knows things Mike Gene’s readers do not.

6. Demonstrate consistency. A clear sign of intellectual dishonesty is when someone extensively relies on double standards. Typically, an excessively high standard is applied to the perceived opponent(s), while a very low standard is applied to the ideologues’ allies.

More and more, Mike Gene’s 10 Commandments of Intellectual Honesty is coming across as a guidebook to rhetoric and propaganda, a how-to for the systematically intellectually dishonest.

We know that if you apply any standard evenly across multiple arguments, high or low so long as you retain control of that standard and are the one executing it with nuance that favors your own case (intentionally or subconsciously), so long as you use this as an excuse to confound and obscure the better cases with sufficient weak cases, you are serving your own cause by merely bashing and burying the best of the adverse cases among the dross of all the relatively bad ones.

If you can dismiss all but a very few (two to five) cases with little effort, and do it honestly, do so before applying the harder standards.

If your next level of harder standards eliminate all but two cases, do so before proceeding to the most intensive exploration.

If you have two cases, then apply equal standards to them, sure. But don’t imply, if you’re honest, that yours is the only standard; allow for expansion of the analyses going forward with better standards if any better standard is conceivable. (See #1.)

For example, while I apply Newton’s standards (of parsimony, simplicity, universality, accuracy and truth), I’m perfectly willing to expand on and extend Newton’s standard. So soon as someone smarter than Newton comes along and makes a superior argument to Newton’s.

Alas that Mike Gene didn’t start with points 7-10. Those are actually quite good so far as I can see. They’ve been done — and well — elsewhere before by other writers, but no one has a monopoly on good sense.

The 10 signs of Intellectual Dishonesty is nice and all, and I have no quibbles with it, other than being a bit too short: only 10?

Uhm.. Simplification of complex problems is how they get solved, how confident conclusions are arrived at. It’s the fundamental process of all Mathematics. It’s why models exist.

And simplification is far from lazy: it’s hard work to do right.

Perhaps the laziness comes from only doing it part way? Or underthinking the simplification process, or failing to estimate (or is it measure?) confidence of conclusions.

2. Strong personal convictions that are based not upon an individual’s personal examination of the evidence, but rather on the second-order evidence of the existence of a consensus.

Huh. I’m not sure whether this is saying that strong personal convictions based on nothing at all are okay, but if other people have worked for lifetimes on understanding and analysing questions, then it’s automatically wrong to consider they might know something that conflicts with those personal convictions based on nothing?

While I like to decide these things for myself, and am skeptical enough to examine what I’m told where reason dictates, it’s been my experience people just as often ‘examine evidence’ on invalid as on valid bases, and far from being lazy about it, they put a great deal of zeal and effort into it, when they might have had better, more reliable, outcomes by checking with authoritative sources for guidance in understanding.

3. Failure to continually question and challenge your assumptions.

Because there’s nothing less lazy than indecision and paralysis by analysis?

Because there’s nothing less lazy than indecision and paralysis by analysis?

5. Cherry picking evidence in presenting your arguments; i.e. failure to present evidence both for and against your arguments.

Which is particularly good at saving the intellectual work later of dealing with actual evidence against your arguments instead of the stooge straw man evidence you’ve contrived to knock down and seem fairminded by so doing.

6. Tribalism that excludes viewpoints from ‘outsiders’.

While this is certainly wrong, and hardly intellectual, how is it lazy again? I mean, is this a list of bad things, or of intellectual laziness? Taking the time to prune lists is a bit more work, but it saves us from such embarrasment.

7. Failure to explicitly place your research and its implications in a broader context of previous scientific research

I always hate when people do this. “So clearly we can see from our study of wooly bear caterpillars that the Democratic plan to coddle takers will harm the makers and destroy America.”

Overreachingly broad contexts are commonplace in published papers, and fail to serve science.

Simplifying things is often an essential step in solving complex questions – exactly as you write. Bart.

But the problem is oversimplifying things

o·ver·sim·pli·fy v. o·ver·sim·pli·fied, o·ver·sim·pli·fy·ing, o·ver·sim·pli·fiesv.tr.
To simplify to the point of causing misrepresentation, misconception, or error.v.intr.
To cause distortion or error by extreme simplification of a subject.

I do not have a sense that Dr. Curry’s use of ‘over’ in the case of simplification is always consistent with consensus..

manacker | April 20, 2013 at 4:45 pm |

This is the crux of the point.

When one claims oversimplification after one has clearly and rationally deduced mistakes due oversimplification separately from the sole foundation of oversimplification as the mistake itself, that’s one thing. When one begins and largely rests one’s case on an argument of presumptive oversimplification, one merely begs the question.

So _starting_ a list of intellectual laziness — separate and apart from the label of laziness being generally inapplicable — or an item in the list with the term ‘oversimplifying’ — leads to the mental laziness of easy inference not based on actual evidence, but mere ambiguous implication.

Instead focus on the reader, not the writer, on such true signs of intellectual laziness in readers who fail to drill deeper at gloss and handwaving, who allow simplification they have not independently themselves verified leads to conclusions that are sound, I suggest.

You can’t expect every writer to be clairvoyant of what talented and knowledgeable readers will find to object to beforehand. The reader has an obligation to provide feedback, having thought for themselves and checked with other opinions.

Almost all the forcings are anthropogenic; there is only one small entry for natural forcing: solar irradiance (representing around 7% of all of the climate forcing since 1750, despite the fact that 20thC solar activity reached a maximum level for several thousand years).

In other words, natural factors were considered to have played a very small role in the change in climate since 1750, with CO2 by far the largest single factor.

Future climate change was projected based on these forcing factors and estimated changes in the various components.

On this basis, warming of 0.2°C per decade was projected for the next two decades, modifying slightly an earlier forecast of 0.15° to 0.3°C (average 0.225°C) in the TAR.

A very neat and “simple” way of looking at our planet’s climate.

Then came the “pause”.

Instead of 0.2°C per decade warming there was no change for a period of 12 to 15 years (or even slight cooling, depending on which starting year is used), despite unabated human GHG emissions and CO2 concentrations reaching record levels.

Suddenly the culprit was “natural” factors, not considered (or grossly underestimated) in the earlier oversimplified approach.

If by intellectual honesty we mean the ability to admit to being wrong, I’m sorry to report it’s in short supply. How many times have you see words to this effect on this blog or any other? “You know what? You’re right. I was mistaken.”

I remember Josh admitting to a mistake once. Also Bart R. A few others.

I of course am more than willing to admit to being wrong. Funnily enough, it just hasn’t happened yet.

When I notice that I have mistaken on something of significance I try to be the one who states that most explicitly, that’s my view of best defense as I risk otherwise the possibility that others show that against my word. I have done that on a couple of occasions also here.

There are other cases where it remains debatable, whether what I wrote was right or wrong or only badly formulated. In such cases my reaction varies. There are naturally also minor mistakes not worth being brought up or corrected.

And then there are matters on which we have opinions and opinions are often not right or wrong, they are just different.

Pekka, despite my joking above, I have the same approach. If I say something I later realize is factually wrong, I’m usually in a hurry to admit the mistake before someone else does it for me. I did that the other day concerning the official position of the Royal Society, after I realized I wasn’t sure of my facts…

Unlike you, I don’t really have a reputation to protect. Just trying to avoid embarrassment.

This used to be a blog where I learned a lot about climate science.
This thread shows that these days, whatever the subject, the blog has become a place where certain denizens just play ping-pong with each other, to no one’s edification.
A lost opportunity, IMHO.

11. Admit when you’re over your head in you secondary skills sets (eg statistics) and seek expert help in those areas that are not in your primary skills set. If you argue with an expert, you might be right, but the odds aren’t very strong.

The validity of the manmade global warming alarm requires the support of scientific forecasts of (1) a substantive long-term rise in global mean temperatures in the absence of regulations, (2) serious net harmful effects due to global warming, and (3) cost-effective regulations that would produce net beneficial effects versus alternatives such as doing nothing. Without scientific forecasts for all three aspects of the alarm, there is no scientific basis to enact regulations. In effect, it is a three-legged stool. Despite repeated appeals to global warming alarmists, we have been unable to find scientific forecasts for any of the three legs.
. . .we have, to date, identified 26 historical alarmist movements. None of the forecasts for the analogous alarms proved correct. In the 25 alarms that called for government intervention, the government impost regulations in 23. None of the 23 interventions was effective and harm was caused by 20 of them.

The issuance of probabilistic forecasts introduces additional technical considerations (e.g., in evaluating forecast “goodness”) but does not appear to contradict these general findings related to liability. At the other end of the spectrum, a forecaster should be found liable if a forecast was based on a deliberate, knowing falsehood or withholding of information.

> It turns out, Alan Greenspan was a closet Hayekian macroeconomist all along. Beyond a dose of hedge here and there, Greenspan seems to be aware that the mistakes of the Fed needed to be corrected. But he simply chose to go with the short term politics over the long term economics: […] Greenspan many times indicated his knowledge of Hayekian economics and his sympathy for the “Austrian” school. The mystery has always been “what was he thinking”. Now we know.

Well Jim D, when Mr. Mosher responds to rgbatduke’s post on the same thread then maybe he will have done something. His little anecdote reminds me of the viral vids of greenies signing petitions to ban dihydrogen monoxide. Yup, you can make believers on *both* sides looks like fools quite simply.

Now, rebutting rgbatduke’s arguments, not so easy. By the way, have you ask Mr. Mosher why a pause in warming of 25 years (not 24, not 26) would convince him that CAGW isn’t a worry? Did you get a satisfactory explanation of the physical mechanisms that operate on 25 year intervals?

Note that I said a pause of 25 years would make me change my position on sensitivity. I don’t even know what CAGW is.

My view is pretty straightforward.

AGW at it’s CORE is this:

1. Humans have increased GHGs in the atmosphere.
2. Increased GHGs, all else being equal, cause warming not cooling.
3. How much warming? there’s the knob that you adjust as you understand more.

Given our current state of understanding, the best evidence ( some of which is dodgy ) and the best science ( some of which is wrong and incomplete ) suggests that a doubling of C02 will lead to 3C of warming– all else held constant. As the pause extends, I’m open to turning that
belief knob down. If warming resumes with a vengence I’m open to turning that knob up.

So pretty simple.. #1 hard to disprove.. #2. damn near a physical law.
#3.. wiggle that knob as you learn more..

k scott denison | April 20, 2013 at 8:26 pm |
rgb does make an argument, that the problem is too big to reduce to or even talk about simple concepts like sensitivity to one and only one variable.

So why 25 years? And why, then, doesn’t the pause from 1941 through 1970 make you rethink sensitivity
######################
The notion that the problem is “too big” to reduce to single metric is not really an argument. The question is how useful is that single metric AS OPPOSED to other metrics. Further, nobody seriously ascribes all change to one variable. In my post I said more than 50%.. That is hardly ascribing ALL CHANGE to ONE variable. So he makes no argument against my position. Consequently, he doesnt need to be rebutted.

25 Years. Well, the first pause is already FACTORED INTO my position. another pause, after such a run up in c02, would have me adjusting my belief about where the sensitivity knob is set.

A) it would not say anything to me about the usefulness of the knob.
B) it would cause me to re evaluate where I think the mode of the distribution lies.

I would not argue with 25 years. The way you would work it out is to decide what the maximum natural variability magnitude is (0.2 degrees for decadal averages, for example based on what we saw in the last century), and how much you want CO2 warming to exceed that by to be convincing. In 25 years, CO2 global warming should be about 0.5 C, so it should easily outdo any natural variability in that time-range and lead to warming. If it doesn’t, something unusual is happening to make natural cooling larger, and it should be obvious from the data what that would be if it was that large.

yup. I was figuring something around .2c for natural variability.. hmm somewhere I think we said .17C.. and we have about a 25 year pause mid century.. so with GHGs continuing to rise if the pause goes on for 25 years.. One would have to re assess the amplitude of internal forcings..

Jim D and Mr. Mosher, you should take a second look at both your statements and what rgbatduke had to say. You start with “decide what the maximum natural variability magnitude is…” and then both quickly agree to about 0.2c.

And this is based on which direct measurements? Over which period? During which CO2 was constant?

“Jim D and Mr. Mosher, you should take a second look at both your statements and what rgbatduke had to say. You start with “decide what the maximum natural variability magnitude is…” and then both quickly agree to about 0.2c.

And this is based on which direct measurements? Over which period? During which CO2 was constant?

You start by violating rule #1 of this post, but no matter I guess.”

################################

rule #1 was overstating the POWER of the argument.
Well, you can see very plainly that I have not ascribed any power whatsoever to the argument. I don’t ascribe any power to the argument. you can accept it or not. To your questions:

1.And this is based on which direct measurements?
There is no such thing as “direct” measurement. there is accurate, consistent, repeatable measurement and there is less accurate, less consistent, less repeatable measurment. The measurement in question is the last 250 years or so of air surface and sea surface temperature. Its not repeatable because its historical. It’s inconsistently taken and of varying degrees of accuracy. It is, however, the best we have and any conclusions drawn from it should be conditioned by its state as ‘evidence’

2. Over which period? The past 250 years or so. Note that what we are talking about is unforced variability.. or internal variability. The quasi periodic residual that is left over after we remove “what we know” The latter, of course, is a construct or assumption.
3. During which CO2 was constant? C02 has never been constant. That is one of the reasons why statements about “unforced variability” are hard to make. We cannot hold forcing constant to see how the system will wander around. The best we can do is start with an assumption:
External forcing produces a change of X. subtract X from the wonky measurements we have and you are left with unforced variation.
How certain is this? hard to say, but its what you do to try to construct a consistent view of things. The alternative is to look at the wiggles and say “IT WIGGLES!” therefore wiggling explains the wiggles. that’s not explanation.

Hmmm? AMO/PDO even though PDO is an index, is about 0.2 C. The LIA guessimate is somewhere between 0.5 and 1 C lower than “normal” and based on the Greenland melt records there is a hint of a ~150 year natural pseudo cycle. That recovery may or may not have “finished” circa 1940. If you neglect that part of the natural variability, then you have 0.2, but with it, you are going to need to seriously revise some aerosol fudging and cloud/wv SWAGging.

Since most of the easy amplification is out of the way, CO2e has a harder row to hoe. That could put CO2e back to its original 1.6 C (2.1 with WV).if you happen to start around 1910 or about 0.8 C if you start about now.

“Hmmm? AMO/PDO even though PDO is an index, is about 0.2 C. The LIA guessimate is somewhere between 0.5 and 1 C lower than “normal” and based on the Greenland melt records there is a hint of a ~150 year natural pseudo cycle.”

#################
yup.

The question of a LTP with a “quasi” period of over 100 years is always out there. Like unicorns. So ya, it could be unicorns.

ksd, what was asked is what length of time of no warming would it take to change the minds of people who view AGW as correct to change their minds. AGW is consistent with temperatures over the past century give or take 0.2 C here or there for “natural variability” around the curve (see Vaughan Pratt for just a simple example). So, yes, 0.2 C or thereabouts is consistent with AGW for “natural variability”. How long before CO2 warming exceeds this enough that we can see it clearly? The CO2 decadal trend is near 0.2 C, so periods close to a decade could easily be distorted by “natural variability”, especially if people insist on using annual temperatures to get the 1998 El Nino. Annual temperatures have higher natural variability than decadal averages obviously, making it longer before you can detect a trend with them. With decadal averages the trend is clear, and no waiting is required because the twenty-year decade-on-decade difference never stopped rising during the so-called pause.

Jim D | April 20, 2013 at 9:38 pm |
ksd, what was asked is what length of time of no warming would it take to change the minds of people who view AGW as correct to change their minds.
————-
Yup, I understood well what was asked and I asked how can one be certain. We have what, a little over 100 years of real temperature data (let’s not go down the proxy path). We have less than 50 years of satellite data.

Yet you are certain that 25 years without warming is enough to falsify AGW. Really? Every parameter that can possibly impact climate has exhibited it’s effect in those 100 and 50 years?

Over complicating simple problems and claiming you have complicated Models that give the right answer when your models have failed for decades.
Simple is looking at the data for the past ten thousand years and project this forward as most likely for the future.

OK, fair enough, I do know. Like Chief has said -it doesn’t. Though I’m surprised we agree on that.

The correct, and honest, approach would involve an acceptance that a widening of the uncertainty range means that the increased possibility of adverse effects would counteract the increased possibility of less adverse effects and therefore have neutral policy implications.

The undesirability of the use of any argument merely to create an impression could perhaps be the basis Judith’s point #8 ?

Below is a copy of a post at WUWT by “rgbatduke” which, I think is the most intellectually honest post I’ve read about climate.
——–

rgbatduke says:
April 19, 2013 at 5:11 am
Running your plot up to the end of data looks like about the most convincing argument for a strong CO2 effect I have ever seen. Quite worrying.

Ah, but don’t stop there. Why “550 months”? 600 months is a fifty year centered average, but it is pretty arbitrary, right? We don’t know the time constants for any of the processes associated with the hypothetical oceanic turnover, and of course it isn’t going to show any of the recent flattening of temperature or the effect of the last two solar cycles as they simply haven’t been around long enough to show up. Of course if you drop it to 60 months (five year centered average) nothing interesting shows up. If you go to 800 months, you don’t HAVE to clip the ends, they get clipped for you. The “perfect” correspondence goes away, of course, but you still get that correlation that is still (last time I looked) not causality.

And note well, Lief hasn’t even shown up yet to point out that the SSN counts in this database are all incorrect pre-1980, and that by the time they are all corrected even the 550 month truncated correspondence is largely gone.

Let’s not forget, others would have us plotting planetary influences against the temperature, so even if any given single parameter fits fails it doesn’t mean that it is wrong, only that other things are right as well. You assert that it is convincing to you that CO_2 might be the cause of the divergence at the end, but if you plot the same temperature series against carbon dioxide, you get an absurdly inadequate result because CO_2 was almost flat over the first 2/3 to 3/4 of the graph and has been a smooth monotonic function throughout where the temperature curve has a variety of slope and curvature variations.

And then there are the global decadal oscillations: ENSO, the PDO, NAO. It actually isn’t completely crazy that these oscillations might substantively moderate the overall heating/cooling efficiency of the planet on a decadal timescale, given that they make significant changes in where heat picked up one place is transported to another, lifted up to be radiated away, or modulates cloud cover and hence albedo or cloud/water vapor GHE (where there is 30 times more water vapor in the troposphere at any given time than CO_2, and where it is a potent GHG all by itself responsible for the vast majority of the GHE). Bob Tisdale has argued persuasively that ENSO alone is largely responsible for the “escalator” pattern in the late 20th century temperature series, not CO_2.

Somewhere under there are some very slowly varying causes — variations in orbital cycle, for example — but those causes are nonlinearly coupled to everything else so it is not really safe to say that they are irrelevant. In the long-time-series historical record, they very likely constitute a nearly irresistible factor that drives some sort of set-point for the climate, quite possibly with a decadal to century timescale lag, so the Earth could still be “catching up” to variations that occurred 600 years ago and that are responsible for some unknown fraction of the curve.

At some point, plotting “global T” against any single parameter, especially a monotonic parameter over an interval where “global T” itself was nearly monotonic, becomes a completely empty exercise. That point was reached long ago. It is perfectly clear that no single driver can explain the global temperature series of the entire Pliestocene. We have no single-parameter model that can describe the temperature series for the last billion years. We have no model that can describe the temperature series (deduced from e.g. ice cores) for the Holocene. We have no model that can describe the last 2000 years. We have no model that can describe the last 1000 years. We have no model that can describe the last 500 years. Not single parameter, not two parameter, not ten parameter (well, we can fit anything with ten parameters, of course, but at that point we can fit it hundreds of ways and none of the extrapolate or hindcast the rest of the series above and hence all of them are meaningless.

Can I point out one more time that this is a hard problem? One that is unlikely to yield to mere numerology?

And don’t even get me started on the data itself, or the fact that nobody makes woodsfortrees plots with error bars. I mean if one were going to try to fit the data, or look at any sort of correlation matrix or covariance matrix of the two (or more) proposed correlated entities, that would be one thing, but the significance of the fit depends pretty strongly on the error bars one assigns to the points on the basis of unknown factors, since none of the data represented there is pulled from an iid process. One of the factors is data “adjustment”, for example, where a stunning series of adjustments have almost universally increased the perceived warming in the temperature series.

IMO, one can really only trust the satellite derived post 1979 temperature estimates. Before that time, it is too, too easy to tweak the data within very large error bars and accept this, reject that, UHI another bit, and end up (somehow) with a lot more warming than one might expect looking at the raw thermometry. How one can tweak a UHI to make the series warmer in the present is a good trick, of course.

Finally, one needs to read about Hurst-Kolmogorov in order to understand the data escalator. This works both ways — the current flat is indeed not necessarily significant. Neither is the trend it is superimposed on. Insufficient information in a strongly coupled multivariate nonlinear system.

he loses when he starts to talk about adjustments that he has never actually studied. Hmm, roll the clock back to 2007 -2008 and you will find a loud mouth named moshpit blathering on about adjustments and uncertainties in adjustments. hmm. 5 years later after walking through them all, after looking at data that was both adjusted and unadjusted, I came to the conclusion that moshpit was wrong. Took a while, but for me there was no substitute for actually looking at the data and the code.
What’s more telling is that we know C02 is a problem WITHOUT looking at the data. Arrehenius did not start to explain what C02 would do because he wanted to explain a rise in temperature that had occurred. He predicted the rise from basic physics. Put another way. Toss GISS and HADCRUT and BerkeleyEarth in the trash. Pretend it never existed. Throw huge error bars on it.. guess what? you still know that dumping c02 in the atmosphere will cause a rise in temperatures over time NOT a cooling of the planet over time. The temperature record is not evidence for the truth of AGW. AGW is true inspite of what it says..

Ok, please tell me what the global mean temperature was yesterday and how you calibrated the measurement. Please point me to where there is a paper showing a sizable region, say 100 miles by 100 miles, covered with thermometers on a one mile by one mile grid, that shows that one thermometer in the middle of this region accurately captures the trend of “climate” in the entire region.

Also, please point to the papers that show how trends have changed as records gave been update and adjusted. What fraction of the adjustments have resulted in lower trends?

“Ok, please tell me what the global mean temperature was yesterday and how you calibrated the measurement. ”

go look at RSS or UAH. read the calibration documents. Dont expect me to do your work for you.

“Please point me to where there is a paper showing a sizable region, say 100 miles by 100 miles, covered with thermometers on a one mile by one mile grid, that shows that one thermometer in the middle of this region accurately captures the trend of “climate” in the entire region.”

Well, you dont have to cover area with thermometers every mile to capture the trend. 1 every 1000 km will do just fine. You can test this for yourself using k fold cross validation. Why rely on a paper when you can do the test for yourself. Take the US. look at all 25000 or so stations. Compute trends for any size grid you like. Then decimate your source. Pick 1000 randomly. pick 500. hell pick 100. how do the trends change? opps they dont change a lot. Or do this. look at data never touched by NOAA, Hansen etc

So, I’m in the process of looking at this data. why? to keep challenging the silly notions you have.

“Also, please point to the papers that show how trends have changed as records gave been update and adjusted. What fraction of the adjustments have resulted in lower trends?”

I would not suggest that you read papers. The papers are mostly advertisements for the science. I will suggest that you do what I did. get the data. See for yourself. For myself I worked with unadjusted data. The answer didnt change when I shifted to using adjusted data.
As to the percentage of adjustments that result in lower trends. WHY would you assume that this metric was indictative of anything. Nobody would expect the changes to be equal especially when the biggest adjustment is TOBS and that adjustment was proven to to correct by skeptics. Go figure, bet you didnt know that.

Steven – apparently you really do want to start a fight. You are dead wrong that AGW is true. It is simply false. What you wrote first of all indicates that you suffer from intellectual laziness JC is talking about. You are too lazy to think it through, too lazy to read my posts, and if by any chance you saw one you were too lazy to take me seriously. I use “laziness” because I simply can’t believe that you are that stupid. Let’s start with carbon dioxide. It is absolutely true that it will absorb infrared radiation and the energy of this absorbed radiation will warm the gas. Arrhenius new that much. But consider this: carbon dioxide is not the only greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, water vapor is too, and there is more of it. What you must do is measure their combined absorption in the infrared when both are active, and do this in nature, not in the laboratory. That is exactly what Ferenc Miskolczi did in 2010. He used NOAA weather balloon database that goes back to 1948 to measure infrared absorption of the atmosphere over time. And found that absorption had been constant for the last 61 years. At the same time, carbon dioxide went up by 21.6 percent. This means that the addition of this substantial amount of carbon dioxide to air had no effect whatsoever on the absorption of IR by the atmosphere. And no absorption means no greenhouse effect, case closed, no AGW is possible. His observation is purely empirical, does not depend on any theory, and overrides any predictions from theory that do not agree with it. Since the data he used are available to anyone there is nothing to stop you from repeating his experiment if you have doubts about it. Until you decide that you do want to do that to save the global warming theory from total destruction we must go by his results. They tell us that anthropogenic global warming does not exist simply because greenhouse warming does not exist. Since absence of the greenhouse effect is counter-intuitive I should explain to you what is going on. First of all, let me reassure you that carbon dioxide did not stop absorbing in the infrared. Miskolczi theory requires the existence of an optimum infrared absorption window for the atmosphere as a whole. It is maintained by all the greenhouse gases present. If, for example, more carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere this will increase absorption, and the other greenhouse gas, water vapor, must decrease to maintain constant over-all absorption. This is equivalent to negative water vapor feedback, the exact opposite used by the IPCC. The optimum absorption window is a measurable quantity and Miskolczi determined its value to be 1.867 in optical thickness units. Later on he divided the entire database into seven sections and determined the optimum IR optical thickness for each segment. To three significant figures, they all agreed it was 1.87. He presented this graph at the EGU meeting in Vienna in 2011. I reprinted it in my Arctic warming paper which is somewhere here on JC’s web site.

The temperature record is the outcome of multiple control variables and multiple feedbacks as emergent behaviour in a complex and dynamic system and not proof of anything at all.

Nonetheless – Miskolczi claims certain physical laws apply when they don’t. When questioned it out to be radiosonde data that can’t possibly be accurate enough to prove what he claims. There is moreover – no plausible mechanism for a constant optical depth and even if there were the presence of cloud would absolutely confute the theory.

Wait. Arno, the guy too lazy to use line breaks, is accusing someone else of being lazy? That’s good for a laugh.

I’d love to hear how there could be a negative feedback that exactly counters the effect of anthropogenic global warming. I just don’t think I could bring myself to read a wall of text from someone who refuses to hit the Enter key.

Thanks for your thoughts Chief. There’s an another Aussie called Christopher Game who has some thoughts of his own on this paper which I not only find interesting but also educational on the science of the GH effect.

The facts are quite clear. The claimed application of physical laws – radiative equilibrium at the surface, virial theorem, etc, is not the case. When I questioned this I was told that I was quite right and the relationships were based on radiosonde data. The radiosonde data is far from sufficiently accurate enough to divine the optical depth to 2 or 3 significant places or nearly enough to determine the subtle effects of greenhouse gases. If you leave clouds out your characterisation of the energy environment is out by 30% plus or minus quite a lot.

‘Miskolczi (2010) proposes a ‘radiative exchange equilibrium law’, stating that on average the downward thermal infrared flux at the Earth’s surface (Ed) and the absorbed infrared radiation with the atmosphere (Aa) are equal. By claiming that this approximate equality is a physical law Miskolczi is putting an additional unphysical constraint on atmospheric radiative transfer. In reality this approximate equality is caused by the fact that the upward surface flux is absorbed in the lower atmosphere and the downward infrared flux (Ed) also originates from this same region. This is due to the fact that the mass of most greenhouse gases is concentrated at lower levels and the temperature of these levels do not deviate much from the surface temperature. In this sense, Miskolczi did not find anything new. In fact, Miskolski overstates the equality of these two terms. Kiehl and Trenberth (1997) and Van Dorland (1999) find differences of 25 Wm-2 (over 5%) if clouds are accounted; Van Dorland (1999) additionally shows that clouds (globally averaged) increase both terms, Aa and Ed, almost equally. Therefore, the difference between Aa and Ed in the aforementioned cloudy case also applies to the clear sky case of Miskolczi.’ http://www.realclimate.org/docs/Rebuttal_Miskolczi_20100927.pdf

It is pretty much a webby trick of taking a mean and ignoring the variability. What we are interested in is the variability.

But perhaps the simplest refutation is that a constant IR optical depth implies a constant IR flux at TOA – this is far from the case. It is patently nonsense and Christopher is an enthusiast who has deceived himself into believing impossible things. There are of course many of these people on the internet. It is not so much intellectual dishonesty as internet wackiness.

I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!”

Thanks Chief, its good to have you as guide, philosopher and friend in my personal journey with climate change. Your link was almost intelligible to my non-scientific mind! The learning experience continues.

When I saw one of these papers a few years ago – I had not the faintest idea what he was talking about but spent almost a month trying to understand before coming to a conclusion. Learning goes down paths sometimes that are not immediately rewarding.

Some of Miskoczi’s papers are total crap, some later ones contain both valid work and serious mistakes. What I found very disappointing in one of his later papers is that he did a perfectly valid calculation of clear sky IR transmission and presented illuminating plots of his results. But then he stopped just one little step before getting results that would have told about the strength of the influence of additional CO2 on GHE.

He did about 99% of the correct analysis, but left out the 1% that would have given the correct result. Leaving that last bit undone he was able to continue to present his totally erroneous “theory” without explicitly contradicting his own analysis.

Miskolczi doesn’t dispute a greenhouse effect. He disputes CO2 having increased it in modern times. His hypothesis is called “The Saturated Greenhouse” and it basically says that as CO2 increases in the atmosphere water vapor decreases and thus the greenhouse effect remains the same.

The main counter-argument is that balloon soundings don’t provide data that is reliable enough to prove it. There is merit in the counter-argument. Better data however is being gathered as we speak and it’s not looking good for Miskolczi so far but it’s looking real good for Springer’s climate theory.

Here a study of surface records at 309 sites in north America from 1948 – 2010 finds relative humidity near the surface decreasing but specific humidity increasing. Miskolczi predicts the RH decrease but can’t survive the SH increase in specific humidity but I predict both as that would be what you’d observe if the cloud deck formed at a higher altitude. I believe that when there is plenty of water on the surface available for evaporation that increased CO2, and hence increased DWLIR, accelerates evaporation with no change in surface temperature. This causes the lapse rate to reduce and water vapor must then convect higher in the atmosphere for adiatic cooling to condense it. When a cloud of the same temperature forms higher in the sky it then has less radiative resistance between cloud top and outer space and more radiative resistance between cloud bottom and the earth’s surface. The result is more efficient cooling of the cloud and hence the GH effect from increased CO2 is negated.

Given that over land there is often not enough water to sustain evaporation, especially in higher latitudes in winter when the ground is frozen, there will be a temperature increase due to increased CO2. This explains the decreased RH in the observations as the warmer air can hold more water but there’s not enough surface water to fill the gap. Conventional AGW theory predicts both RH and SH would rise so the finding of falling RH and little increase in SH puts the kabosh on so-called water vapor amplification. There’s some but not much.

Over the ocean Springer’s climate theory turns on the fact that a liquid surface cannot be warmed or insulated to any significant degree by downwelling mid-infrared radiation. DWLIR illuminating a liquid water surface drives evaporative cooling not radiant heating. So there’s little to no direct greenhouse warming of the global ocean. There is significant greenhouse warming of the continents and this indirectly warms the ocean to a small degree by warmer rivers flowing into the ocean.

The long and the short of all that is that climate sensitivity in these typical interglacial conditions should be roughly one third of the model ensemble projection because GH warming doesn’t do much over 70% of the earth’s surface at any time and not much over very wet continental regions such as most of the tropics. You’ll observe the AGW effect mostly in higher dryer continental regions. Eventually the so-called climate sensitivity pdf will be lowered from 1.5C – 4.5C to 0.5C – 1.5C. Dr. Curry has already pointed out it’s becoming increasingly difficult to support the higher range as the troposphere doggedly continues refusing to warm even though anthropogenic CO2 is pouring into it at an accelerating rate. Mark my words. What I’m telling you will be in Climate 101 textbooks in ten more years.

In that paper Miscolcki. The Figure 6 explains well essential parts of the outcome of his radiative calculations.

He could have repeated that calculation with another CO2 concentration and compared the results. The most important comparison concerns radiation to space. From that comparison an estimate for the forcing due to additional CO2 can be seen. The result is certainly not an accurate value for CO2 forcing for the real Earth, because the calculation is a clear sky calculation for a given atmospheric profile, but it’s good enough to tell the order of magnitude and good enough to tell that his own conclusion contradict a basically correct calculation.

I would expect that Miscolcki is by now fully aware of the situation and understands why his theory is wrong.

(The basic error of his theory is that he makes some assumptions that are not correct and derives the results from this incorrect input. The assumptions state that certain quantities must be equal, but there’s no reason that they would really be equal. The values are not very different, but different enough to reverse his conclusions.)

Well, you dont have to cover area with thermometers every mile to capture the trend. 1 every 1000 km will do just fine
———–
And where has the validation of this theory been conducted?

My observation is we typically have thermometers in areas that are easy to reach. Not exactly an unbiased sample.

———————————————————————

It’s worse than that. The easy to reach places are in the industrialized parts of the northern hemisphere. In higher latitudes over land Springer’s Climate Theory predicts we’ll observe the greatest AGW signal. We’ll observe little to none over the ocean nor over perennially wet tropical climates. Follow the regional potential for evaporation because AGW is inversely proportional to it. That’s what my hypothesis (it’s not a theory as no one has a *theory* of climate) predicts, that’s what we observe, so I’m sticking with it unless contrary evidence comes along to falsify it.

Wait. Arno, the guy too lazy to use line breaks, is accusing someone else of being lazy? That’s good for a laugh.

I’d love to hear how there could be a negative feedback that exactly counters the effect of anthropogenic global warming. I just don’t think I could bring myself to read a wall of text from someone who refuses to hit the Enter key.
————————————————————————-

What a cheap shot with not one but two references to run-on paragraphs caused by laziness.

Cheap shot? This post is about intellectual dishonesty/laziness. Failing to abide by basic, reasonable conversational standards is perfectly topical. A person cannot intentionally post in an unclear manner and make claims toward honest communication. Arno has been informed of the difficulty his use of wall of texts creates time and time again, and he chooses to make no effort to address it.

A lack of clarity is understandable and forgivable, but a willful decision to not attempt to communicate fairly is not.

“That’s what my hypothesis (it’s not a theory as no one has a *theory* of climate) predicts, that’s what we observe, so I’m sticking with it unless contrary evidence comes along to falsify it.”

On the one hand he calls his theory a theory and then calls it a “not theory”. This is argumentation for argumentation’s sake. Better do something mathematically formal otherwise your credibility will continue to slide.

Lately, I am very interested in the lapse rate because there are some potentially revealing thermodynamic invariances involved in its calculation, and in characterizing adiabatic atmospheric processes in general.

To clarify, I understand Miskolczi to calculate the global optical depth of all significant greenhouse gases based on available data and finding very little change over 61 years. Changes in humidity measurement technology might have affected the long term data trends. Other than that, do you see any error in his optical depth calculations?

Secondly, from the data he finds first order relationships between parameters, and from that develops his stationary greenhouse theory resulting in an optical depth that appears about constant, stationary (or effectively “saturated”).
I agree there are second order effects that need to be included that could impact the results.

Brandon, you should draw the water from the river rather than expect it to irrigate your fields on schedule.

OK, sorry about that. Just read it as stream of consciousness and enjoy.

Miscolzi, Miscolzi, I’ve heard about him long enough to be able to spell his name correctly and I still have little clue whether he is right or not. If right, it would explain why Jim Cripwell and I can’t measure climate sensitivity yet, though we watch the estimable show on Mulberry Street.
===============

Brandon, you should draw the water from the river rather than expect it to irrigate your fields on schedule.

I could write my comments in 133+5|>34|(, Spanish or just type all of them backwards. Those are all legitimate forms of communication. None of them are appropriate for this venue. People would be right to take issue with them.

OK, sorry about that. Just read it as stream of consciousness and enjoy.

I don’t see why I would enjoy reading comments made in a style known to be annoying. Even if I did enjoy them, I’d still criticize the person for making them. Especially given the number of insults Arno Arrak uses.

So now we have a grammarian talking about negative feedback. Not a trivial subject, so it’s not for you. Just remember that there is no anthropogenic global warming and your feedback urge will go away. If not, try reading my wall of words a few more times. It just may help you come out of the daze that AGW has you in.

I know it is impolite to speak ill of the dead. I’m told that I am frequently impolite.

The quintessential climate scientist’s ethical yardstick.

Stephen Schneider: scientists, activist, politician

“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both”. (Quoted in Discover, pp. 45–48, Oct. 1989).

Though many of us on both sides of the climate debate
have failed to maintain the high standards cited in this
thread, for many of us it was the scary scenarios … the
whatever it takes, revealed in the Climategate emails that
were a call to arms

There was also the contempt for contrary views, the name
calling, and efforts to silence opposition, like Schneider’s
‘ got you on a list’ and GATE KEEPING, this an attempt
to muzzle open enquiry.

Socrates, I consider, would approve the intellectual
honesty debate, Plato less so, and Judith is an
example of it to us denizens.

I disagree with Schneider but I consider him honest as he presented his views openly in public. He told what his values are and he explained the conflict between two subsets of his values.

I disagree with him because his choice leads to two major problems:

1) It may turn out at his overall judgment is wrong.

His overall judgment was based both on his understanding of the state of science and on the consequences of various actions and policies. Even if his assessment on the climate science and it’s uncertainties was unbiased input, joining that with the other factors may have resulted in errors in overall judgment. He was not an expert on all essential for overall conclusions.

2) His approach may be effective in short run but it has a great risk of backfiring.

My view is that his approach, shared with several other scientists, has already gone trough both phases. First it was, indeed, rather effective, but presently the climate debate policy preparation is suffering from the early simplifications and expressions of more confidence than warranted.

Ethical considerations are personal, declaring own ethical preferences and following them is – ethical.

Following own ethical rules when they conflict with law is punishable by law, deviating from what my (or yours) ethical rules are for a scientists is not punishable by law but may lead to other consequences unfavorable for the scientist, or for science more generally, or perhaps we are wrong.

Intellectual honesty is not the same thing as “ordinary” honesty. While a honest person tells what he thinks, an intellectually honest analyses his own thinking, and that’s exactly what Stephen Schneider tells about in his writing.

i have seen a video of Stephen Schneider as a young man, when he was still able to admit ignorance. He has never been so convincing since then. Pekka, you should be ashamed to defend that dedicated activist; he’s analyzed himself to infamy.
==============

Pekka, the effective difference between “honesty” and “intellectual honesty” is just in the target. People are honest with others. They’re intellectually honest with themselves. Ultimately, there is little difference. The only reason it matters is by lying to ourselves, we delude ourselves. That lets us spread our deceptions without realizing they are deceptions.

Intellectual dishonesty just serves as a way to launder outright dishonesty.

BiHo08 says:
” Have I ever told you that Schneider’s ethics makes my blood boil.”
You don’t have to tell me – I have a book called “The Age of Global Warming” by Rupert Darwall. In his last chapter he devotes four pages to Schneider that can make you throw up. What follows is based upon his book.
On 4th February 2010, Stephen Schneider gave one of his last lectures in Stanford where he was a professor of interdisciplinary environmental studies and biology. Specifically created for him, no doubt. In his lecture he asked the class: “Is the science of anthropogenic climate change settled?” A dumb question and of course they said yes. Why? “Climate science is not like test tube science. You don’t falsify. Eventually you do but not right away,” Schneider explained. “It’s a system science.”
He described system science as built on a base of of well-established components, then a layer of competing explanations and finally a layer of what he called speculative components. “Every single complicated system science, whether we’re talking climate science, healthcare, security, education, always is going to be in this category.” he said, illustrating the convergence of natural science with economics and social sciences.
The convergence enables scientists to make their claim to formulating government policy, traditionally the province of social sciences, enhanced by its reputation as a hard science, even though system science was diluting it. Now natural scientists were trading the rigor of knowledge derived from experimentation and falsification for a lead role in determining public policy. “Opinion” perhaps better describes its output. “Knowledge” implies what is known whereas opinion indicates a statement of belief. But in the physical sciences, what is determinative is not what scientists think or believe but what can be demonstrated by testing hypotheses against nature.
But while forsaking falsifiability climate scientists still kept a problematic feature of scientific practice – a strong tendency to operate within an unquestioned dominant paradigm. In this case, it was belief in anthropogenic global warming.
This makes even more problematic the form of system science falsification permitted by Schneider. “We do not falsify by single experiments. We falsify on the basis of accumulated numbers of papers and numbers of bits of information.” Near the end of his lecture he elaborated: “There are still some people who think climate science operates on the basis of falsification. In the case of system science it does – by community action over decades.” Thus the “scientific community” is accorded the determinative role formerly given to experiments conducted on nature.
And what defined this scientific community to him? “I’m talking about those people who actually do the work,” not non-climate scientists who drop in opinions from the outside. Those outsiders just “…write blogs and screeds and do ‘audits’ without really being members of the community.” Their arguments might be technically correct but they would show “…selective inattention to inconvenient components.” He dubbed this form of opposition “courtroom epistemology.”
He also did not like the media. According to him when they covered both sides of an argument they presented a spurious balance that did not reflect the bell curve of the outcomes. Public confusion about the science was also sowed by malign fossil fuel interests and thereby had stalled global action.

In summary, climate science according to the Schneider doctrine is a “system science” where experiments on nature no longer count and decisions are made by a consensus. If wrong, decisions can be overturned but on a time scale of decades. Outside criticism is not allowed even if technically correct. The press should not report opposing views. And Climatists should be the ones to advise governments. This is how far he got before fickle fate took him away. Judging by the present state of climate science his heirs are working hard to put his doctrine into action

6. Demonstrate consistency. A clear sign of intellectual dishonesty is when someone extensively relies on double standards. Typically, an excessively high standard is applied to the perceived opponent(s), while a very low standard is applied to the ideologues’ allies.

is the most important guideline to whether or not somebody is intellectually honest. Note. People can be honestly wrong.

It is perhaps less intellectual dishonesty than cult of AGW groupthink space cadets.

‘Groupthink occurs when a homogenous highly cohesive group is so concerned with maintaining unanimity that they fail to evaluate all their alternatives and options. Groupthink members see themselves as part of an in-group working against an outgroup opposed to their goals. You can tell if a group suffers from groupthink if it:

1.overestimates its invulnerability or high moral stance,’

It seems largely about politics for many. AGW serves as a narrative of catastrophe and catastrophe itself as a catalyst for the realisation of the socialist utopian dream. e.g. – http://urbanhabitat.org/cj/16-2

‘2.collectively rationalizes the decisions it makes,’

The emphasis in the public sphere is on the so-called consensus rather than the exploration of complexity and uncertainty that is characteristic of climate.

‘3.demonizes or stereotypes outgroups and their leaders,’

There is a whole industry here.

‘4.has a culture of uniformity where individuals censor themselves and others so that the facade of group unanimity is maintained, and ‘

In 2008 and I suggested to a young ecologist that the CRU temperature series was fairly flat since 2008. Her immediate response was to suggest that the CRU were a den of denialists. For the most part the space cadets have very little understanding of the details – but are more than capable of repeating the memes and the rationalisations with overweening confidence. Cognitive dissonance and post facto rationalisation rule.

‘5.contains members who take it upon themselves to protect the group leader by keeping information, theirs or other group members’, from the leader.’

Endless simplified messages intended to persuade politicians and the public to certain actions. Endless complaints that the public ain’t getting it because of right wing ideologues and the consequent push to limit certain – or not ‘tolerate’ – expressions as liable to mislead a gullible public. An Owellian impetus to control dialogue codified by Herbert Marcuse.

‘Groups engaged in groupthink tend to make faulty decisions when compared to the decisions that could have been reached using a fair, open, and rational decision-making process. Groupthinking groups tend to:

1.fail to adequately determine their objectives and alternatives,
2.fail to adequately assess the risks associated with the group’s decision,
3.fail to cycle through discarded alternatives to reexamine their worth after a majority of the group discarded the alternative,
4.not seek expert advice,
5.select and use only information that supports their position and conclusions, and
6.does not make contingency plans in case their decision and resulting actions fail.’

The question I ask myself is do I have skin in this game or am I merely curious. The answer with climate change is that whatever the science says – the rational policy response seems to remain the same and has for decades. The way forward is with energy innovation in the medium term and multi-objective paths I have described endlessly. Evil things like the Copenhagen Consensus priorities and the Millennium Development Goals – even though the latter are UN mandated.

It is perhaps item 6 above that is the most telling – the failure to make any progress has not resulted in any reassessment by many of their goals and objectives. It is a matter of endlessly repeating the same arguments and actions and expecting a different outcome. This is the insanity of the contemporary pissant progressive.

I think Judith’s is trying to persuade the regular participants on Climate Etc. to improved the quality and integrity of the discourse, desirably to back how it was a couple of years ago.

I suspect what will happen is there will be an improvement for a while, and then it will slip back.

I think what Judith is trying to do is akin to herding cats.

I have a tongue-in-cheek suggestion based on the conviction: “you get what you measure“. The suggestion is that each comment is automatically evaluated and given a score using a weighted average scoring system based on the 10 signs for honesty, 10 signs of dishonesty and 10 signs of intellectual laziness.

We’d see how our posts rank and strive to improve. Climate Etc. would improve, other blog sites would follow and the world would become a better place!!

The Left’s claim of a scientific consensus, labeling William Gray — a serious scientific skeptic — as a ‘denier’ (and all skeptics as deniers thereafter), pretending the foi2009.pdf disclosure was a criminal act by outsiders instead by a whistleblower with a conscience, acting as if the UN is not a political body, branding CO2 as a pollutant, demonizing ‘big oil’ to obscure the colossal government investment in pushing the global warming agenda, changing the name of the threat from global warming to climate change to disastrous climate disruption, blaming current weather conditions on global warming, and now pretending global warming exists but no one is pushing the ‘alarm’ button today — but, we still must act today based on disaster 50 years for the sake of the unborn — are all examples of intellectual dishonesty.

Our ‘interest is to understand – first the natural variability of climate – and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,’ Anastasis Tsonis said.

There are many aspects of the climate system showing not merely natural variations but abrupt change.

‘In summary, although there is independent evidence for decadal changes in TOA radiative fluxes over the last two decades, the evidence is equivocal. Changes in the planetary and tropical TOA radiative fluxes are consistent with independent global ocean heat-storage data, and are expected to be dominated by changes in cloud radiative forcing. To the extent that they are real, they may simply reflect natural low-frequency variability of the climate system.’ AE4 s 3.4.4.1

If real – it requires a fundamental reassessment of climate processes and there seems little reason to doubt that something is happening. There is an obvious and parsimonious explanation of the current cool mode – emergent behaviour seen in such indices as the PDO, AMO and ENSO. This mode is likely to last 20 to 40 years from 2002. I was looking for signs that Australian rainfall regimes had shifted back to a wet period early last decade – it definitively has. But there are implications for the trajectories of global temperatures as Tsonis suggests.

I find the failure to consider this even as a potential is one of the greatest failures of AGW groupthink. As a failure of mitigation politics it is stupendously short sighted. Rather than dishonest or lazy – it seems definitively an inability to process incongruous information.

Hmmm, no, it is the “skeptics” that have failed to consider the cool mode and solar slump as explanations of the pause. The AGW side including Tsonis willingly accepts these to be in play in the most recent decade. The “skeptics” seem to prefer to think it is the CO2 forcing that has stopped, as far as I can tell, not that the pause is the sum of a positive CO2 trend and negative solar and PDO trends.

Jim D
Speaking of honesty, on what evidence do you infer “skeptics” prefer “CO2 forcing that has stopped”?
That appears to have the greatest consistency – and possibly the least impact. How are you distinguishing natural from anthropogenic CO2?
Water vapor is the greenhouse gas with the greatest impact.

‘If as suggested here, a dynamically driven climate shift has occurred, the duration of similar shifts during the 20th century suggests the new global mean temperature trend may persist for several decades. Of course, it is purely speculative to presume that the global mean temperature will remain near current levels for such an extended period of time. Moreover, we caution that the shifts described here are presumably superimposed upon a long term warming trend due to anthropogenic forcing. However, the nature of these past shifts in climate state suggests the possibility of near constant temperature lasting a decade or more into the future must at least be entertained.’ S&T09

It is suggested that there are two additional processes related to emergent properties of the climate system. A shift in the way heat is transported across the planet and changes in cloud radiative forcing associated with these shifts in ocean and atmospheric patterns – ENSO, PDO, AMO, SAM, NAM, MJO, SSW etc.

We are at the peak of the solar cycle – as I am sure I have shown you before. It seems very likely to continue to decline from a 1000 year Grand Maxima.

And the 20 to 40 year cool mode of the PDO – which are associated with increased frequency and intensity of La Nina – is definitely part of the multi-decadal pattern. Nor should you expect the 1000 year high point of El Nino intensity to persist.

‘Figure 12 shows 2000 years of El Nino behaviour simulated by a state-of-the-art climate model forced with present day solar irradiance and greenhouse gas concentrations. The richness of the El Nino behaviour, decade by decade and century by century, testifies to the fundamentally chaotic nature of the system that we are attempting to predict. It challenges the way in which we evaluate models and emphasizes the importance of continuing to focus on observing and understanding processes and phenomena in the climate system. It is also a classic demonstration of the need for ensemble prediction systems on all time scales in order to sample the range of possible outcomes that even the real world could produce. Nothing is certain.’ http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1956/4751.full

It is not all about CO2 Jim – your post hoc rationalisations – the inability to process confounding scientific information – the rampant tribalism – the misrepresentation of views – the demonization of deniers. It is all symptomatic of cult of AGW groupthink space cadets.

Tsonis is about the new paradigm of abrupt climate change and not the old and simplistic views of control knobs and AGW.

David Hagen, what would the fuss about the pause be if it was explainable as natural negative and CO2 positive effects offsetting each other? Have “skeptics” accepted there are good reasons the earth should have cooled over the past decade, but somehow hasn’t? If so, I missed it, apart from CH, that is.

CH, if it is a solar max, and I won’t say it isn’t, it is the weakest solar max in over a century and much weaker than the one eleven years ago. This should leave a mark in the decadal trend, which I would guess would be of order 0.1 degrees. The PDO cool phase may have added another 0.1 degrees, CO2 opposed that with 0.2 degrees, bingo, there is the pause.

Again – the argument is only to consider the potential for lack of warming for anther 10 to 30 years – consider what that will do for the politics of mitigation and consider a plan B. I have been saying this for years only to be demonised as a denier. Utterly incredible.

The inability to consider these things argues psychopathology rather than intellectual dishonesty or laziness.

The science is there and it seems not all that difficult – it just a matter of being able to understand it. The AGW space cadets seem on another plane entirely – driven by a need to keep their apocalyptic scenarios. The motivation for space cadets seems to be the old millenarian one.

Funny you should mention earthshine. I pointed it out in an article I write in 2007. I happened to live about an hour away from the Big Bear Solar Observatory where the experiment was conducted. I used to ski in Big Bear fairly often during the 20 years I lived near it. It’s only an hour’s drive from the beach but, critically, 11,000 feet higher in elevation.

“Earth’s climate is driven by the net sunlight that it absorbs,” says Philip R. Goode, leader of the New Jersey Institute of Technology team, Director of the Big Bear Solar Observatory, and a Distinguished Professor of Physics at NJIT. “We have found surprisingly large–up to 20 percent–seasonal variations in Earth’s reflectance. Further, we have found a hint of a 2.5-percent decrease in Earth’s albedo over the past five years.” If Earth reflected even one percent less light, the effect would be significant enough to be a concern with regard to global warming.

I quoted that from Science in 2007 so the 2.5% drop in albedo was from 2002-2007. Part of that was undoubtedly due to decreasing depth of perennial snow and ice cover as those years were the warmest in recent decades. As deep snow melts any soot in it floats to the top and gets darker and darker as the melt progresses and buried soot becomes concentrated on the surface. You see I grew up in the northeast US near an intersection where a lot of 18 wheelers had to stop and turn. They belch a lot of sooty diesel smoke in the process. Snowdrifts nearest the intersection would turn black on top as they melted down with decreasing darkness the farther from the intersection you got. The darker they were the quicker they melted too. Yogi Berra once remarked “You can observe a lot by just watching.” How true.

Big Bear Solar Observatory is in southern California just east of Los Angeles. The comment above talking about its proximity to the beach and its director in New Jersey might lead one to think it’s in New Jersey not California. I’ve lived in New Jersey too. That’s where I attended Meteorological Equipment Repair School back in the 1970’s just before moving to California as it happens. You won’t be sunbathing at the beach and skiing in New Jersey on the same day unless maybe you’re in the polar bear club. You could do that in southern California no problemo in the winter.

Jim D | April 20, 2013 at 10:11 pm
Why, Jim, how do you know so much about the skeptics? How did you find out that ‘…“skeptics” seem to prefer to think it is the CO2 forcing that has stopped…’? I don’t know what these guys think but I am pretty sure they don’t think that you can turn CO2 on and off like that. Lets leave that to the warmist crowd. I for one like to stay with the laws of physics and methods of science. I particularly dislike pseudoscientists who invent an imaginary warming and then want me to pay for saving the world from it. Imagine for once that you are a real scientist and you are told that adding carbon dioxide to air will warm it. You want to know if this is true and you start an experiment. You add carbon dioxide to air every day and measure the temperature also every day. You do this for seventeen years but nothing happens and finally you quit. Your conclusion is that adding carbon dioxide to air simply does not warm it. That is exactly the experiment nature has been performing, and nature has come to the same conclusion that you just did. But lets take it further. The conclusion from this experiment is not restricted to the seventeen (or twelve or something) year period it lasted. It describes a property of carbon dioxide that is applicable to all situations where carbon dioxide is added to an earth-like atmosphere. We are told that presence of carbon dioxide in the air warms the atmosphere in proportion to its amount in the air.There is more of it in the air than ever before but it seems to have lost its charm. Maybe this is where you got your misinformation from. But let’s look at the temperature history and see if carbon dioxide can explain it. Carbon dioxide history is quite boring – an essentially linear rise with a seasonal wiggle due to deciduous trees growing and shedding their leaves. The wiggle is quite informative and tells us that the average lifetime of a carbon dioxide molecule in air is less than ten years. That is quite similar to observations from carbon-14 generated by atmospheric nuclear testing in the fifties. But temperature history of the last century is nothing like carbon dioxide history. Starting with the twentieth century, the first ten years were cooling. Then suddenly, warming started in 1910. It kept going steadily until it stopped equally suddenly in 1940. By that time it had raised global temperature by half a degree. But there was no increase of carbon dioxide when it started. This rules out carbon dioxide as a cause even if you still cling to your greenhouse theory of warming. And you can’t stop greenhouse warming suddenly because you would have to remove carbon dioxide molecules from air suddenly and there is no way to do that. In the fifties, sixties, and early seventies nothing much happened to temperature. The next warming started in 1976 and was called the the Great Pacific Climate Shift. It was a step warming and raised global temperature by 0.2 degrees. It was oceanic in origin and its cause is supposed to be a phase shift of PDO from its cool to warm phase. It lasted four years, until the beginning of the eighties. The eighties and nineties were a period of ENSO oscillations. This is not unusual because ENSO has a period of approximately five years and all temperature curves going back as far as you like show it. But this stretch of ENSO oscillations is so clearly seen on satellite data that we can determine global mean temperature accurately. And it turns out that mean temperature was constant for 18 years. This period was followed by the super El Nino of 1998. It brought so much warm water across the ocean that this caused another step warming to start in its wake. In four years global temperature rose by a third of a degree and then stopped. This is a third of an entire century’s warming. Global temperature curves do not show it because they are falsified to hide the temperature standstill of the eighties and nineties. This step warming was the final warming of the century and there has not been any since then as you should know. It is quite impossible for carbon dioxide to create a step warming so no part of the warming within the last 100 years can be called a greenhouse warming. In fact it is impossible to ascribe any of these three warming periods to carbon dioxide because the record shows that carbon dioxide did not change at all when these various warming periods started and stopped. Which means no carbon dioxide greenhouse effect for the last 100 years.

Arno Arrak, OK, so you say the CO2 effect hasn’t stopped because it never started. You might be in a small minority corner of even the skeptics with that one. CO2 has added a forcing near 2 W/m2 since the 19th century. This may not sound much but is ten times the difference between max and min in an 11-year solar cycle and an estimated at least 4 times the difference of the change since the Maunder Minimum. Also larger than volcanic changes that have led to brief coolings, and not only that but it is sustained and rising by 0.04 W/m2 per year. Even as the sun and PDO try to push us towards cooling, this rise has sustained 2012 as one of the warmest on record globally. By the end of the century, the forcing will be 6 or more W/m2 above the pre-industrial value. This should lead to a rise in the global temperature to somewhere in the region of 3 C more than today.

Jim D | April 24, 2013 at 12:23 am |
Jim you just don’t understand the physics of it. I am sorry I left it out, so here is the back story you need. I don’t dispute the fact that carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation, it does. But then you have to follow what happens next. Ferenc Miskolczi determined the absorption of infrared radiation by the atmosphere using NOAA database of weather balloon observations that goes back to 1948. He found that the absorption was constant for 61 years. At the same time carbon dioxide went up by 21.6 percent. This means that the addition of this much carbon dioxide to the atmosphere had no effect whatsoever on the absorption of IR by the atmosphere. And no absorption means no greenhouse effect, case closed. This makes anthropogenic global warming physically impossible. To understand how this is possible, you have to know that carbon dioxide is not the only greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Water vapor is there too, and there is more of it. According to Miskolczi, if several greenhouse gases simultaneously absorb radiation there exists an optimum absorption window for the atmosphere that these gases jointly maintain. If, for example, more carbon dioxide is added and it starts to absorb, the amount of water vapor must diminish in order to bring total absorption back to the optimum value. This is equivalent to negative water vapor feedback, the exact opposite of what IPCC uses. The net effect is to simply nullify the warming that the absorption of radiation by carbon dioxide would otherwise have created. That is exactly why there is no warming today and there has been none for seventeen years even though carbon dioxide is the highest it has ever been and is still increasing. A further deduction is that any past warmings alleged to have been greenhouse warmings were simply a natural warmings, misidentified. I don’t believe there is a list by IPCC that specifically identifies origins of historical warming periods, they just claim a blanket greenhouse for the century or half-century as the spirit moves them. But now there is an obligation for them to determine the origins of all known warming periods. That would be a worth while use for some of the billions of research dollars they have been collecting.

Arno Arrak, Miskolczi has made his own definition of optical depth in the IR window region, and it is no wonder he doesn’t see a CO2 effect there, by definition. This little subtlety of what he means by optical depth as opposed to everyone else has caused a lot of confusion. I am not sure why he even expected to see a CO2 effect in wavelengths for which the atmosphere is transparent.

Jim D | April 24, 2013 at 12:23 am | (No. 2)
One more thing, Jim. You think 2012 is “one of the warmest” years and I agree but you have not the slightest isea why this is true. It so happens that the 1998 super El Nino carried a huge amount of warm water across the ocean, enough to create a step warming in its wake. In only four years global temperature rose by a third of a degree and then stopped. This was the one and only warming period within the satellite era that began in 1979. As a result we now have a warm temperature plarform, the well-known temperature standstill that even Pachauri the railroad engineer recognizes as real. This means that all twenty-first century years starting about 2001 stand a third of degree above the previous years. This is not a small thing because a third of a degree is one third of the total warming for a century if that total was one dgree. If it was less than a degree it may be close to half a century’s warming, all created within a four year period by the super El Nino of 1998. And, yes, it is not greenhouse warming as Hansen has been trying to tell us.

Apparently a group of fans of Miskolczi decided to band together and try to rewrite his theoretical musings into something that could easily be followed. After awhile they evidently figured it was a hopeless effort because nothing ever came out of the effort.

Even they couldn’t put lipstick on a pig … expecting it to turn presentable.

On the one hand, not to consider an alternative and/or dismiss it out of hand does not seem in keeping with “science” as we understand it.

A failure to “see” or acknowledge may be on some people’s part be a function of their belief system.

I have been thinking, there appears to me to be a more practical issue as to why otherwise sane and dedicated scientists go off the scientific rails, a political one.

EPA’s Endangerment Finding relies upon IPCC for the scientific basis for their impending regulatory actions. EPA did not do their own science. Once such regulations were contemplated and now out for comment, the massive political and social movement to move trillions of dollars into one direction: to shut down coal fired power and eventually all fossil fuel use is being asked to change directions.

Like a supertanker underway, to change directions, to avoid an uncharted reef, requires planning and foresight and energy to redirect. The uncharted reef dead ahead is the current temperature pause. The breaking waves signaling the reef, the paper by Tsonas, the changing cloud’s albedo impact, Lorenz’s attractor, etc. manifest a reality not contemplated nor accounted for: disbelief; “how could this happen?”

As in the phases of grief, this first phase is shock and disbelief. We are already beginning to see from some, anger and wonderment: “how could this be happening to me?” There assuredly will be those who will never accept and move on, the majority however, will do so. At least, that is my belief.

phatboy, if everyone understood the physics, the debate would be on specific points mentioned in the WG1 report or in textbooks and arguments against them. Clearly the debate is mostly not on the science itself.

Anyway I like the uncertainty fog analogy. Judith is a proponent of uncertainty. The natural thing to do with uncertainty is be cautious where we can. Slow down what we are doing that leads on an uncertain road, carbon emissions in this case. As it is we globally still have our foot on the gas, or at least China is pushing it for us. The US and Europe are coasting into the fog, no brakes applied yet.

Pushing the analogy further, some may even put their seat-belt on, knowing that some impact is likely, be prepared, which is where a carbon tax aimed at adaptation helps or at least some forethought for adaptation even without specific funds.

Taking it even further:
The brakes will, by any account, only give a small respite before we hit the buffers.
But all anyone seems to be doing is screaming that OTHERS must, at great expense to themselves, replace THEIR brakes, while knowing it’s not going to make much difference.
What science SHOULD be doing is trying to clear the fog, so we can all see where we’re heading.

phatboy, we will be crashed and picking up the pieces before some countries put their seat-belts on. Let’s hope we at least are in countries that are prepared. Adaptation doesn’t all have to take place after the crash. There are things that can be started beforehand with scientific guidance as to what is in that fog.

So, while mitigation is one size fits all (one set of brakes, one global CO2 concentration), adaptation is what kind of seat-belt you choose to have and how vulnerable you are in the first place (how close you are to the front of this global bus).

Jim D, that’s what we’ve been told to expect on a REGIONAL basis.
And yes, we do need the best scientific answers, but we’re not going to get them by shouting down all who dare to suggest that we just might not already have all the answers.

Dunno if it’s already included in Dr. Curry’s list, but the intellectual laziness of commenters on blog posts, and blog posts based on other blog posts: It seems to me that a lot of people see only two sides of an argument, 1) the side of the blog I trust, and 2) the side of my opponents, as presented by the blog I trust along with the refutation.
This is how most people seem to think that they have a good overall picture.

AGW theorists are steering academia in the wrong direction. They are missing the real reward — truth for its own sake — because, they can only see the research dollars. They cannot see nature overtaking their confabulations and cannot admit they were wrong. They believe the best way ahead is to never admit what happened in the past and what is happening now even if they destroy the credibility of science in the process and abandon all pretense to uplifting in public education.

–> And why did all of this happen? Because something happened that the Left will never admit — they’ve turned the West’s economy and it’s headed for a cliff. No one cares anymore about global cooperation to manage a non-problem while Western Civilization is spinning down the swirling vortex and everything the Left and liberal Utopians do only makes the fall that much quicker.

Well, Wag, it has often been argued that this is precisely what “the Left and liberal Utopians” have been aiming for, with CAGW as a handy tool given that they can’t attain their anti-capitalism, smaller population goals by any other means.

Western de-industrialization due to secular socialism may be where we’re headed but combining that with a Gore minimum is not something we buy ourselves out of with a fiat currency. What government agency is planning for what we do next if 3 to 7 decades of a cooling trend is in our future?

1. One doesn’t make lists one doesn’t need;
2. One doesn’t publish lists one hasn’t tested;
3. One’s lists follow their own rules;
4. One’s mind changes as you learn more;
5. One strives to learn;
6. One revises a list when one’s mind changes due new observations;
7. One may take principles from the example of another, but doesn’t blame others for one’s own shortcomings;
8. One doesn’t fear making mistakes;
9. One keeps engaging while one may yet learn;
10. Ten is a very suspect number, one who is intellectually honest shows doubt anything but digits naturally fall into lots of exactly ten without good evidence, so shows skepticism of lists of ten in particular, and skepticism in general, but once skepticism has completed and one is left with one best conclusion, regards it as accurate or very nearly true until new observation requires review, revision, amendment or disposal of prior skeptical conclusion.
11. Commitment to act on the best understanding.
12. Recognition the onus of understanding writing is on the reader, so reads harder, and where possible multiple sources.

Well formulated lists of the type presented by Mike Gene are useful for improving oneself, they are just a form of ad hominem when applied to others. We have really a lot of evidence on the latter point in this thread while we see little evidence on improvement in anyone’s writing.

I have no insight as a writer into the needs of readers, my lists are not for them but for self-reflection. Though for every effort I made to hobble their ad hom nature, they still can be used like a hammer to bear down on other writers.

For example, with apologies to Max:

manacker | April 21, 2013 at 3:12 am |

One notes the implication of your comment appears to meat the measure of item 9 in all three lists. You had an opportunity to continue to engage and learn you appear to have turned away from. You got to the word “lists” and apparently stopped reading or stopped short of wondering what need prompted three new lists. I see no goodwill or good faith engagement in your reply. A true hat trick of nines, and all by someone who claims not to believe in hockey sticks.

We see in so short a time from plentiful evidence in this thread how much mischief one can make with lists, as implicit authorities (we’re using Mike Gene as an authority now?!) and weapons to polarize and terminate discourse while advancing nothing. How many “Violates 6″‘s do we need to further the discussion? Labelling someone Intellectually inferior, as there is no other use for these lists as applied to others than to support name-calling, is guaranteed to add nothing to the topic.

If you want to internalize some list for self-reflection, to check what you write or even better how you read, before pressing “Post Comment”, that’s wonderful. If we’ve come to the point we need checklists for civility and thoughtfulness, great, use the list that works for you.

One suggests however to use a better list than Mike Gene’s, and by all means one better than Judith Curry’s.

“10. Ten is a very suspect number, one who is intellectually honest shows doubt anything but digits naturally fall into lots of exactly ten without good evidence, so shows skepticism of lists of ten in particular, and skepticism in general, but once skepticism has completed and one is left with one best conclusion, regards it as accurate or very nearly true until new observation requires review, revision, amendment or disposal of prior skeptical conclusion.”

Bart, though what you say is true, humans certainly find base ten numeric quantities as inherently comfortable to understand because of our anatomic ten digit design, particularly for our benefit to manipulate objects and in turn ideas, counting to 10 is inherently ingrained in our DNA.

I could credit ‘counting one-two-many’ as engrained in our DNA; though granted the motor centers of the brain have deep mathematical processes built in that perform wonders of calculus without conscious ideation.

It is only by accident or at least poor superstition that the Arabic system stopped at nine for single digits; the Romans didn’t use base ten, and we escaped base twelve or thirteen by happenstance of history. The Mayans didn’t use it. It’s not a natural choice, but a cultural mishap. Base sixteen is infinitely more practical, and base two or eight make logical sense.

But ten is a dyslexic’s nightmare, and a burden for learning and performing simple arithmetic operations.

“Just your average looking girl. In between a hot gorgeous girl (juice) and a overweight female (moose). When your at a party and there are a ton of girls there, but none of them are hot and none of them are ugly….you are in the presence of a whole flock of geese.”

I doubt that’s what you mean by “angry flocks of geese,” but if not, what do you mean?

Max- Ok
I have written many scenarios on fear driven apocolyptic
climate alarmism, pointing the finger controls on individual
free choice, I would say I am life affirming, I love naycher,
music, literature, old movies, dance, jokes, enlightenment,
light and jokes. I’m not departing Oz though I totally love
globalization, places and people.
Btcg

10 Signs of Planetary Emergency
1) The atmospheric composition of your home world is changing rapidly
2) The change is faster than any known event in the planet’s history
3) The changes involve gases which influence the planet’s environment
4) The changes are largely irreversible
5) The impact lags the changes by several decades
6) Your planet’s best centers of scientific knowledge are sounding the alarm
6) The governments of your planet have commissioned investigations which report there is a grave danger
7) Small pockets of your species are in denial
8) The population is short-sighted and complacent
9) Your governments are ineffective and indecisive
10) Time is ticking away

JC’s list of 10 signs of intellectual laziness in the context of the climate skeptic approach to global temperatures of the past millennium.

Skeptic says: Vikings were in Greenland 1000 years ago and grapes were grown in England! So the world must have been warmer back then!1. Oversimplifying a complex problem, and drawing highly confident conclusions from the simplified analysis.

Skeptic says: Everyone knows the MWP was warmer than today! Any reconstruction that shows otherwise must be fraud. Blogs proved it!2. Strong personal convictions that are based not upon an individual’s personal examination of the evidence, but rather on the second-order evidence of the existence of a consensus.6. Tribalism that excludes viewpoints from ‘outsiders’.

Ed Hawkins, of the University of Reading, in Britain, points out that surface temperatures since 2005 are already at the low end of the range of projections derived from 20 climate models (see chart 1). If they remain flat, they will fall outside the models’ range within a few years.

Another interesting question to ask is, how long might we have to wait before a warmer year occurs? Although, we may be surprised that 1998 is still the warmest year recorded, the GCMs suggest that, for global mean temperature, it is possible that we could wait 17 years; and so far
we have been waiting 12 years.

lolwot – What’s your point? The only thing I get from this miss-mash is that you don’t like skeptics and you want to draw it out. Grist is full of similar stupidities but they are sharper and much more voluminous than you are. None of this contributes to science.

lolwot | April 21, 2013 at 5:47 am |
It is not a gimmick, lolwot, it is an observation. Of course I don’t expect you to understand its meaning because you are ignorant of Arctic history. First, note that the Arctic is the only place in the world that is still warming. That is because it is not greenhouse warming but is caused by warm water carried into the Arctic Ocean by North Atlantic currents. It started suddenly at the turn of the twentieth century after two thousand years of slow cooling. It paused in mid-century for thirty years, then resumed, and is still going strong. The mid-century pause very likely was caused by a temporary resumption of the pre-warming pattern of ocean currents. It is important to realize that in nature what has happened before can happen again. That is why I think it is worth while keeping a lookout for any changes in the Arctic warming pattern as Lawrence Solomon does. His cold spell may or may not indicate another reversal of currents but it is definitely important to follow it up. What happens is of huge interest to people planning to use Arctic resources made possible by warming.

(1) Identification of conspiracies Denialists argue that scientific consensus arises not as a result of independent researchers converging on the same view but instead because researchers have engaged in a complex and secretive conspiracy. They are depicted as using the peer review process to suppress dissent rather than fulfil its legitimate role of excluding work that is devoid of evidence or logical thought.

(2) Use of fake experts It is rarely difficult to find individuals who purport to be experts on some topic but whose views are entirely inconsistent with established knowledge. The tobacco industry coined the term “Whitecoats” for those scientists who were willing to advance its policies regardless of the growing scientific evidence on the harms of smoking.

(3) Selectivity of citation Any paper, no matter how methodologically flawed, that challenges the dominant consensus is promoted extensively by denialists, whereas any minor weaknesses in papers that support the dominant position are highlighted and used to discredit their messages.

(4) Creation of impossible expectations of research This may involve corporate bodies sponsoring methodological workshops that espouse standards in research that are so high as to be unattainable in practice.

(5) Misrepresentation and logical fallacies An extreme example of this characteristic is the phenomenon of reductio ad hitlerum, in which anything that Hitler supported (especially restrictions on tobacco) is tainted by association. Other methods of misrepresentation include using “red herrings” (deliberate attempts to divert attention from what is important), “straw men” (misrepresentation of an opposing view so as to make it easier to attack), false analogies (for example, because both a watch and the universe are extremely complex, the universe must have been made by some cosmic watchmaker), and excluded middle fallacies (in which the “correct” answer is presented as one of two extremes, with no middle way. Thus, passive smoking causes either all forms of cancer or none, and as it can be shown not to cause some it must, it is argued, cause none).

(6) Manufacture of doubt: Denialists highlight any scientific disagreement (whether real or imagined) as evidence that the entire topic is contested, and argue that it is thus premature to take action.

Conclusion Denialism is cultural dishonesty, in service of shared mercenary and/or ideological ends.

The Good News Fortunately for Climate Etc readers, in comparision to garden-variety dishonesty and/or incompetence and/or lack of imagination, the six characteristics of denialist cultures are *easy* to recognize!

A fan of *MORE* discourse | April 21, 2013 at 8:58 am |
Hey fan, how did you get an interest in doctoring? These Brits have their problems with bogus medicine and are open about it but so what. If you think that the problems of their medical profession are present in climate science you are making a huge leap of faith. The faith of a true believer, that is. The one who knows who the bad guys are because you read Oreskes and Conway. Now these are two people who did have an in with Nature Magazine. Nature printed a two-page, illustrated, propaganda-filled ad for their book and then refused to accept comments about it.

If these lists of honest and dishonest behaviors are to be of any use, it is only if each person applies them to himself or herself. Surely the act of applying such rules to others is a prime indication of failure.

Then use its proper name, Uncertainty. You could go with irreducible imprecision, but that is too wordy. I do like unicorns, but it is non-standard. Uncertainty in methods, measurements and theory explain most everything.

“Uncertainty in methods, measurements and theory explain most everything.”
Actually this is more than a small part of the scientific argument for CO2 warming. It is the unacknowledged uncertainty in temperature measurements from a century or more ago. Assuming that simply averaging a bunch of readings from different locations and times will produce an accuracy greater than that of the thermometers used (+/- 1 degree F or so) is lazy thinking. Just because that is the way the statistic method chosen works does not justify the assumption. Likewise, just because you can describe any number of non-instrumentation situations where the assumption is valid does not make it valid in this case.

GaryM, Yes, but they place too much certainty in the wrong parts of the the theory.

It should go, “A doubling of CO2 will cause some increase in atmospheric temperature at some level of the atmosphere. At that level, the impact of CO2 should be ~1.44 C degrees per doubling, IF ALL ELSE REMAINS THE SAME.” Then there is uncertainty in the level, the “tropospheric hot spot” and everything else which may or may not be impacted by a change in CO2.

The first step is to isolate the level or ERL FOR CO2. Water vapor is limited to near the atmospheric boundary layer so it would have a different ERL. Lapse rate is limited by DRY gases above the ABL. Then you move on and find that without finding THE tropospheric hot spot, we know Fu$k all, drop back and punt.

Instead they assume that the least certain 2/3 of the ideal maximum CO2 impact based on the greatest amount of uncertainty is REAL, Ignore that the diurnal temperature range reversed in 1985 and proceed full steam ahead with false confidence and bravado even though warming since 1976 is 0.6C +/- 0.5 C or they could go with the SST which from 1981 has warmed 0.2 C +/- 0.17C.

Amusing, natural variability is capable of rapid and large climate shifts. Until we understand natural variability, it explains nothing. Ironically, that does explain why we can’t explain climate.
====================

natural variation is the THING TO BE EXPLAINED.. it is not the explanation.

I gave an explanation for a viewpoint. You can call that explanation into question by arguing against it. You cannot call it into question by hand-wavingly shouting, “You’re wrong! That’s especially true since phrases can be used in more than one way; things can be both an explanation and a thing to be explained.

You do not get to dictate truth with nothing but bold declarations. You have to provide reasons and use logic. You aren’t God, after all.

Modern warming (see also *OHC increase*) is happening because of increasing GHG forcing. It’s really that simple. Millennial-scale climate change is also likely to have been the result of changes in forcing. It’s actually not very relevant to modern warming.

GHG forcings are well understood and the data is in the public domain, eg here.

And yes, kim, I appear to have a better understanding of how the climate system does than you do. Probably because I have now read a number of textbooks on the topic. You really should consider doing the same.

Mosher’s comment can be misleading if one isn’t careful about what “natural variability” means. Hand-wavingly dismissing things as “natural variabilty” explains nothing. Fluctuations or other changes caused by natural factors can explain much. It is fair to call such changes “natural variability.” We can even point to some such changes.

It’s just a matter of how one uses the phrase. Use it to mindlessly dismiss something, and it explains nothing. Use it to explain something, and it explains something.

No matter how desperately you try to frame this, a single fact remains paramount: modern warming is predominantly the result of increased GHG forcing. Hand-waving about millennial-scale climate change is misdirection.

natural variation is the THING TO BE EXPLAINED.. it is not the explanation.

Exactly. Just like aerosols, water-vapor feedback, cloud feedback, carbon black, etc, etc, etc, They are ALL ANECDOTES on top of ANECDOTES, including natural variation and the arrested 5,000-year long coldening.

“Natural variability” is often used in a lazy thinking way. When people say the temperature rose mostly because of natural variability rather than AGW, but don’t go on to explain a mechanism that does it, that is lazy thinking. With AGW we not only have a mechanism, but a quantification. Natural variability includes solar, volcano and ocean effects, and on longer time scales atmospheric composition has natural variability. The failure of those advocating “natural variability” is to provide any quantification of these effects in addition to saying why they think CO2 is not the cause even as they accept it affects the global IR balance.

You Warmers are going to have to better than producing squiggly line drawings and then telling us it’s Global Warming. It’s like presenting me a picture of a Whopper. Put the real thing in front of me and you might have something.

I have just thought of a number 8 for JC’s intellectual laziness list. Failure to try to understand the AGW scientific case before throwing politically biased slurs against it. It would be a much better debate if the “skeptics” understood something about the scientific foundations. Do they agree CO2 affects IR? Mostly it seems. Do they agree that affects the global radiation balance? Not clear. Do they think the water vapor in the atmosphere is mostly determined by the ocean temperature? Not clear. Do they agree paleoclimate shows CO2 variations in step with temperature variations? Not clear. These areas where their view is not clear look like intellectual laziness, but could equally be because they don’t want to know and just want to be political, which is just plain prejudiced thinking.

You Warmers are going to have to better than producing squiggly line drawings and then telling us it’s Global Warming. It’s like presenting me a picture of a Whopper. Put the real thing in front of me and you might have something.

And following an explanation that graphs are data visualisations (aka evidence visualisations).

BBD, to me it looks like prejudice defined as
“Preconceived opinion not based on reason or experience.”
Clearly many of them form their opinions before knowing any of the science, and from then on it is confirmation bias using blogs as sources instead of looking at the root science. It is not just laziness, but lack of interest or curiosity. Hard for a scientist to understand.

Rather than leaning on the “natural variability” crutch, it would be more honest if climatologists simply said, “we do not know the mechanisms that have caused the past lack of warming despite unabated human GHG emissions and, as a result, we are unable to make any meaningful projections of future warming”.

manacker, I have seen several candidates, increases in ocean heat content while the surface stays cool due to a PDO-like cool mode, Chinese aerosols due to their building coal plants, and the solar decline, but it could be a combination. Whatever it is, it is not a complete mystery, and testable hypotheses exist. Only more measurements, not estimates, can sort it out. Meanwhile the steady continuing rise in land temperature is a tell-tale sign of a continued forcing.

Steven, saying that the current change in temperature are not significant relative to past natural fluctuations in temperature means a lot. That is why Mann and Marcott have a mission to remove the wiggles. If the wiggles mean nothing and the Antarctic mean nothing, then there is a huge waste of resources going on :)

Now if you would like to know how much wiggle can be expected over what time scales, Aqua earth models can provide a nice range and when they actually include the ~4000 meters of ocean generally considered slabs, they have time frames over 1700 years. That is a long time for the unicorn to play before averaging out to zero.

BBD, “Still banging on about this nonsense I see. Explain how OHC can be increasing in all major basins at the same time. ”

Mixing efficiency. That huge amount of strawman energy that is barely measurable, so small it would take over 300 years to increase the average temperature of the oceans by 0.7C degrees, is no different than letting your Holiday turkey rest before carving. At the same time that thermal inertia slowly creeps into the breast meat, the skin is staying at nearly the same temperature.

Now that all the other fixings are ready, that bird will provide energy for the next 20 to 30 years to the Northern hemisphere while the southern soaks up the sun.

It takes time to move energy around in the oceans.

“The Holocene climate of the Southern Ocean is not well understood,
mainly because of the lack of high-resolution reconstructions of ocean surface properties. Here we present a 12,500-yr-long, decadal-scale record of Holocene sea-surface temperatures and sea-ice presence from the Polar Front of the East Atlantic Southern Ocean. The record shows gradual climate change, with no abrupt Neoglacial cooling, and an unprecedented late Holocene warming. The dominant forcing factor appears to be precessional insolation; Northern Hemisphere summer insolation correlates to at least the early to middle Holocene climate trend. Spectral analysis reveals centennial-scale cyclic climate changes with periods of 1220, 1070, 400, and 150 yr. The record shows good correlation to East Antarctic ice cores and to climate records from South Georgia and Bunger Oasis. However, the record shows
out-of-phase behavior with regard to climate records from the western Antarctic Peninsula and the Peru-Chile Current; such behavior hints at a climatic divide through Patagonia, the Drake Passage, and between West and East Antarctica.” Nielsen et al 2004

“[1] During the early Pliocene (roughly 4 Myr ago), the ocean warm water pool extended over most of the tropics. Subsequently, the warm pool gradually contracted toward the equator, while midlatitudes and subpolar regions cooled, establishing a meridional sea surface temperature (SST) gradient comparable to the modern about 2 Myr ago (as estimated on the eastern side of the Pacific). The zonal SST gradient along the equator, virtually nonexistent in the early Pliocene, reached modern values between 1 and 2 Myr ago. Here, we use an atmospheric general circulation model to investigate the relative roles of the changes in the meridional and zonal temperature gradients for the onset of glacial cycles and for Pliocene-Pleistocene climate evolution in general. We show that the increase in the meridional SST gradient reduces air temperature and increases snowfall over most of North America, both factors favorable to ice sheet inception. The impacts of changes in the zonal gradient, while also important over North America, are somewhat weaker than those caused by meridional temperature variations. The establishment of the modern meridional and zonal SST distributions leads to roughly 3.2°C and 0.6°C decreases in global mean temperature, respectively. Changes in the two gradients also have large regional consequences, including aridification of Africa (both gradients) and strengthening of the Indian monsoon (zonal gradient). Ultimately, this study suggests that the growth of Northern Hemisphere ice sheets is a result of the global cooling of Earth’s climate since 4 Myr rather than its initial cause. Thus, reproducing the correct changes in the SST distribution is critical for a model to simulate the transition from the warm early Pliocene to a colder Pleistocene climate.”
Brierley and Fedorov 2010

It is really a pretty exciting thing don’t cha know! The climate’s sensitivity to mankind is less that estimated in the past! Whodah thunk that ocean merridinional and zonal heat flux could have any impact on climate versus compared with monster CO2 molecule?

“Steven, saying that the current change in temperature are not significant relative to past natural fluctuations in temperature means a lot. ”

actually it means nothing.

Let’s say we look at your weight from 1990 to 2000. And we note that over that course of time your weight varies up and down by 10 lbs.. from 180 to 200 with an average of 190.

Starting in 2000, you begin a diet of donuts and lard. I tell you, ” dude, eat like that and you will put on 10 lbs.” sure enough, your weight now oscilates between 190 and 210 averaging 200.

You point to the wiggles of the past and claim.. hey.. a 10 pound swing is normal.
in fact you point to instances in the past where you gained 10 pounds in a couple days and then lost it. How your weight fluctuated in the past has nothing to do with my prediction that “dude, eat like that and you will put on 10 pounds” Note that when arrhenius predicted that adding C02 would cause a increase in temps that he did NOT predict that wiggles would disappear. He made a prediction: the data supports that prediction it does not contradict that prediction.

Steven, okay, explain that to Mann and the out “unprecedented” announcers. Skeptical Science used a 1500 year Teirney proxy reconstruction with a margin of error of ~.5 C and used it to claim that today’s temperatures are “unprecedented” in the past 1500 years.

Marcott used the 66,000 year version of the Tierney reconstruction, pooched the end date forward a about 500 years, averaged a spike down about 1 degree then amplified another spike by about 2 degrees in his slight controversial paper. Without these efforts to smooth the handle, the CO2 wiggle would be lost in the other wiggles.

The wiggles do explain a lot. The current state of the science is in sad shape. How sad?

The heat capacity of the atmosphere is ~1000th that of the oceans. To reach a doubling of CO2 from industrial with take around 150 years. By the time that impact is felt in the oceans, with the 1000 times greater heat capacity, we will be in the NH side of the 21,000 year precessional cycle. There are other more pressing problems than chasing phantasms in the wiggles that may produce 0.8 to 1.6 C more warming in the next 10 generations.

BBD, “Agreed. And the cooling over the last ~4Ma can be ascribed to the slow fall in atmospheric CO2 concentrations from ~400ppmv to ~280ppmv during Pleistocene interglacials. ” You obviously excelled in some soft science. CO2 does not cause interglacial/glacial changes. It can enhance the stability of a glacial or interglacial state, i.e. help regulate, but it doesn’t drive climate.

The cause of the Meridional and Zonal temperature changes was the opening and widening of the Drake Passage. That increased the ocean mixing efficiency allowing the oceans to be a better CO2 sink. You have your cause and effect swapped. CO2 made a good tracer gas to follow the change.

The answer to the other question will always be the same, thermal inertia. 5 x 10^21 Joules per year is 1/1000th the heat capacity of the oceans for one degree C. A sudden stratospheric warming event releases about 5 x 10 ^21 Joules in a couple months. You seem to be grasping at your last straw.

But think about it BBD, with all the instruments and satellite data we have the margin of error for forcing at the surface is +/-17 Wm-2 after all this climate change/ global warming/ climate disruption work.

Due to this particular mechanism, low pCO2 allow maintaining a mild climate during the early Archean. This conclusion will be challenged in the second part of this paper, where the carbon cycle is considered.

Will add to the read me stack. Not sure from the abstract that it supports your assertion that CO2 is not a major driver of climate.

***

You say:

The heat capacity of the atmosphere is ~1000th that of the oceans. To reach a doubling of CO2 from industrial with take around 150 years. By the time that impact is felt in the oceans, with the 1000 times greater heat capacity, we will be in the NH side of the 21,000 year precessional cycle.

My reading of this is that you think the atmospheric response to GHG forcing has to heat the ocean. Is this the case?

If so, it is not correct. Atmospheric warming slows the rate at which the ocean cools. Not the same thing at all.

BBD, “This is not an answer to the question. Nor is the rest of what you write.”

You should have listened to Willard. You statement that GHG forcing was 10 Wm-2 less 50 million years ago would have to have a huge margin of error. it is a wild ass guess at best. Since the physical location of the continents would be difficult to verify as would sea level, salinity, pCO2 etc. to a reasonable margin of error compared with the information we have today, the correct answer is FIIK.

For the other answer which obviously does fit your agenda, it is still thermal inertia/ mixing efficiency. Since that mixing efficiency thing is your main mental block, you should work on it because it is part of the SeeSaw mentioned in one of the papers you like to cite.

Try thinking about it like this. As the northward flow of the THC increases in one of its many cycles, more energy is available to open the arctic. While more energy is being released to the atmosphere/cryosphere, there is also more energy available to the oceans to uptake with the larger surface mixing area. That increases the mixing efficiency of the North Atlantic, but the THC is globally coupled. You would just have impact in one basin, it would be in all basins and amount the same magnitude as the additional atmosphere/cryosphere impact.

The link I provided discusses a 3-D Aqua world model. It is new and needs plenty of work, but they are finding interesting things. For example you said 10Wm-2 GHG forcing. A 100 meter change in sea level has roughly 8Wm-2 impact on atmospheric forcing. GHGs don’t work without the surface providing energy. The oceans provide the vast majority of that energy and small changes in the oceans can have huge impacts on atmospheric forcing. Good thing we have CO2 to help regulate things. Salt also helps regulate things. It even make a pretty good temperature proxy.

captdallas, you seem to be disputing that a 1000 ppm loss of CO2 could have happened since 50 million years ago and/or that the ocean temperature dropped 14 C concurrently, or you agree with these and say they are coincidental and unrelated. You should bring your ideas up with people who study paleoclimate. The test of intellectual honesty is if you can go to them and pass the giggle-test when you expound your ideas. I think either you or they or both would not be able to keep a straight face. Your ideas are best suited to audiences where people haven’t read the papers.

JimD, “captdallas, you seem to be disputing that a 1000 ppm loss of CO2 could have happened since 50 million years ago and/or that the ocean temperature dropped 14 C concurrently, or you agree with these and say they are coincidental and unrelated.”

No, I am not disputing that CO2 could have been 1000 ppm higher 50 million years ago. I am disputing the accuracy of that change in CO2 being equal to 10Wm2 of forcing. It could have been less than 10 Wm-2 at a higher surface temperature or had a much greater impact at a lower surface temperature, CO2 is one of the regulators of climate.

Being a regulator, GHG forcing is non-linear since it is dependent on the surface temperature providing the energy. The data from 50 million years ago is not adequate to determine what impact it may have had.

BBD, “- Explain how OHC can be increasing in all major basins at the same time.”

I already have, numerous times in fact, that is why I said you had a block, kinda like Jim Cripwell. That Spencer link is actually pretty good, you really should read it with an open mind. Repeat to your self while clicking your heels, the deep ocean currents are coupled. The Ocean heat uptake is 1/1000th of the the ocean current heat capacity or about the magnitude of the atmosphere. It that up take is 100% due to CO2, it will that nearly a 1000 years to produce 1.6 C of warming. It is not likely 100% due to CO2.

The rest of your questions are strawmen. If we can’t nail down the true sensitivity to CO2 with the instrumentation we have now, 50 million years ago is a red herring.

captdallas, so how much of a forcing change would you say a 1000 ppm drop of CO2 has, or let’s say 1280 ppm to 280 ppm? Now we are getting somewhere if we can debate this, because it is so fundamental.

captdallas, Spencer’s article seems to have forgotten about upwelling, an important circulation process for colder water to vary in area, which is what is happening in the east Pacific. It is not all mixing, and in fact mixing is quite weak.

BBD, Thanks for the PaleoSens link. I skimmed it but will put it on my reading list.

The general problem I have with the paleo estimates is that they are too coarse to be of much use. It would require a seriously kick butt Aqua model to separate the various causes and effects. The main problem is ocean circulation characteristics which are related to the location and shape of the land masses. If the ocean can’t circulate to the polar heat sinks you can get the 14 plus C warmer “surface” temperature at some point near the equator, but you can’t accurately estimate a “global” surface temperature. Since the “fast” feedbacks are fast, “sensitivity” would reach a plateau quickly then approach some near equilibrium that is more dependent on the symmetry of the land/oceans than the atmospheric composition.

Today for example; the land that is not thermally isolated tends to amplify all forcing. Now that the fast amplifications are out of the way, there will be a slowing of the impact of all forcing. About 0.6 to 1.6C , though I am pretty sure that it is closer to 0.8 because of the “average” ocean temperature of today’s oceans. If the “average” ocean temperature were 2 C lower, “sensitivity” would be 2 C higher. That “average” though depends on the ocean mixing efficiency.

JimD, “captdallas, Spencer’s article seems to have forgotten about upwelling, an important circulation process for colder water to vary in area, which is what is happening in the east Pacific. It is not all mixing, and in fact mixing is quite weak.”

Spencer was focusing on the “missing heat”. The deeper ocean mixing is a slow process with several time frames. The upwelling in the Eastern Pacific is driven by atmospheric circulation and gets all the attention, but near the southern pole the same circulations plus Coriolis drive the ACC which produces the longer term cycles. The “Thermal Equator” shift and sea ice range is influenced by both.

The thermal Equator right now is about 5 degrees north of the equator, so ENSO tend to drive more warmer water north. That also increases the intensity of the QBO and the Northern hemisphere SSW events. There is a whole lot of stuff going on.

captdallas, yes, at least half of the question of the missing heat is explaining why the surface temperature has not warmed over the oceans when the ocean heat content has been increasing. This leads naturally to upwelling, which is what Spencer missed.
BBD, yes, 8 W/m2, this is the kind of calculation I thought no one questioned. Even Monckton and Lindzen have put up the equation you showed without questioning it as it pertains to forcing, not warming, which is something everyone should agree with. The question on agreement with that equation is a litmus test of sorts. I suggest it separates the grade B skeptics from the grade C ones (grade D being the CO2 trace-gas no-effect ones). I haven’t yet figured out where to put the grade A/grade B line, but I think that relates to whether water vapor feedback exceeds others.

The warming in the decades before that were clouds as well. ‘The overall slight rise (relative heating) of global total net flux at TOA between the 1980’s and 1990’s is confirmed in the tropics by the ERBS measurements and exceeds the estimated climate forcing changes (greenhouse gases and aerosols) for this period.’ http://isccp.giss.nasa.gov/projects/browse_fc.html

BBD, “There is no known reservoir of energy in bottom water/abyssal ocean. Where is the energy coming from?”

From the surface near the poles where the deep water mixing occurs. If it were obviously in just one or two basins, then you would be looking at some imbalanced surface forcing. With the uptake uniform among basins but steady of slight declining surface temperatures, it is mixing not external forcing. CO2/land use etc. likely have some impact, but the longer term lag of the deep oceans is consistent with nearly all of the paleo data. With the Arctic warming/recovery from the little ice age plus the 150 year greenland melt pseudo cycle agreeing with Toggwieler’s model estimates and Nielsen’s data, it is just a shift in the THC which is global,

With “sensitivity” in the lower end of the original estimates, you can’t ignore any of the internal pseudo-cycles since they are in the same order of magnitude.

It’s good news BBD! The World is safe until the next spread sheet error :)

BBD, “While we are sandboxing with paleoclimate, let’s not forget the Marinoan Snowball Earth.

How exactly does the climate system get out of this albedo-locked icehouse without the help of CO2?

If CO2 cannot “drive climate” as you suggest, then what did?

It cannot have been clouds because we all know that cloud feedback is negative – right?”

That is why I linked you to the Climate of the Past paper on the Faint young Sun. They included some CO2, but now where near what is normally estimated. Clouds nucleation size was a large part of their model plus land orientation, salinity which reduces the freezing point, but I didn’t see them including geothermal which in a snowball situation would maintain liquid oceans sub-surface. Then it only takes some dirty snow or clear ice to change states.

Remember clouds are a response to solar and SST. There is no “fixed” albedo, so the sub-surface can transfer energy from the equator if there is any open surface water. You don’t get negative cloud feedback until there is enough energy in the atmosphere to extend the life of the clouds that do form. Once you have ANY positive energy imbalance in the oceans, it can accumulate.

Pretty impressive system. DID you know that the freezing point of brine is about -18C? The oceans would be very viscous, but still liquid. It would take a major event to drive Earth into a snowball and not much to get it out.

The Earth would have had greater geothermal energy further back in time which would have provided the liquid core and likely produced a good deal of volcanic activity. The paper mentions -10C as a threshold for transition from snowball but for some reason they place their super continent dead on the equator and run their model assuming it remains dead on the equator where it can limit ocean sub-surface heat transfer more completely. With the super continent shifted north or south instead of perfectly on the equator, tidal forcing would ensure some open water near the equator.

Without the open water, the CO2 could be ridiculously high and not trigger a melt. That is the problem with the CO2 explanation of the snow ball Earth. It takes more than just CO2. Hir et al. like clouds so they get in the same ballpark with less CO2. I like Geothermal, I can get in the same ballpark. You like CO2 so you REQUIRE CO2, but the fact of the matter it is open water near the equator and sub-surface circulation that keeps it a wet planet. Once there is open water, it is hard as hell to get back to snowball Earth.

First stop name-calling. My screen name is BBD. “Blah Blah Duh” and variants are calculated insults.

I was moderated on this blog for a damned sight less.

Second, this sweeping assertion requires referencing:

The Earth would have had greater geothermal energy further back in time which would have provided the liquid core and likely produced a good deal of volcanic activity.

Third, the continents were clustered around the equator during the Marinoan glaciation, which doubtless explains the configuration of the model but not why you are objecting to it.

Fourth, both the inception and termination of Snowball Earth states are hypothesised to be triggered by variation in atmospheric CO2. More here. Some argue for a “slushball earth” with some open water at the equator. The process of entering and exiting this albedo-locked greenhouse are substantially the same as those for “hard” snowball. Once again, it is extremely difficult to explain either inception or termination without substantial influence of CO2 on climate.

You certainly have not succeeded here, and if you look around the literature, you will soon discover that, as I said earlier, nobody agrees with you.

“You certainly have not succeeded here, and if you look around the literature, you will soon discover that, as I said earlier, nobody agrees with you.”

Aw, I am crushed. I should assume that Rotunda was a magical super continent that always lived happily at the equator until 200 million years ago and not imagine the turmoil that an imbalanced Earth may have experience transitioning into an out of hypothetical Snow/slush ball paradoxes.

You don’t know what David Evans (read your own reference, carefully) proposes, do you? Why don’t you take time to find out? Then you will marvel at the way you have confirmed what I said in my earlier comment about the equatorial disposition of continents during the Marinoan glaciation.

;-)

Give it up, Cap. It’s obvious that you don’t know what you are on about and that you can’t argue with the standard position: CO2 plays a central role in the inception and termination of Snowball Earths.

Brian Rose from the NOAA. He is just playing around with a simple model and exploring how changing OHT changes the climate. I like the presentation and thought he did a good job worth watching. It was published but I only have access to the abstract so can’t say that it is exactly the same as this version.

BBD, “Then you will marvel at the way you have confirmed what I said in my earlier comment about the equatorial disposition of continents during the Marinoan glaciation.”

No, you consider dC13 as a cause not an indicator or tracer gas. That is reversing cause and effect. The decay energy of all those handy heavier radiative isotopes that help date events in the distant past would have been much greater 800 million years ago. The crust of the still forming Earth would have been thinner and more mobile. Whether covered with ice or not, the subsurface ocean would have been warmer than the crude “surface” temperature estimated using solar TSI.

That subsurface is your “black body” that provides energy for the atmospheric radiant “shell”. The energy provided to the shell depends on the energy stored in the black body source, the area of the black body relative to the area of the shell, the ability of the shell to interact with the energy provided and the rate of energy transfer in the black body to the interface with the shell. Remember, a black body cannot emit energy faster than energy can be transferred to the active surface of the black body. That means emissivity is not a constant and is never 100%. Emissivity is dependant on the internal energy transfer inside the black body, that is the meridional and zonal flux dependance.

You should either watch the video steven provided or get a transcript.

So how can the oceans uniformly gain a pissant amount of energy equal to roughly the total specific heat capacity of the atmosphere even though there appears to be no change in the “surface” temperature? Thermal inertia inside the black body aka the oceans. Since the oceans are coupled and the atmosphere/ocean boundary layer controls the rate of heat transfer from the black body source, the oceans, to the shell, the atmosphere, any change in the mixing efficiency that changes the rate of heat transfer will have a uniform impact on the ocean heat content. That could be increased CO2, decreased evaporation or even an imbalance in the meridional transport which due to the asymmetry of the global oceans effectively reducing the rate of evaporation kinda like the shift in diurnal temperature range that appears to have happened circa 1985. .The northward shift of the Thermal equator or ITCZ if you prefer which happens to be increasing the rate of Arctic seasonal ice melt and increasing Antarctic sea ice extent. If the deep oceans can lose less energy that is the equivalent to gaining heat content since the system is a pseudo-steady state not a true equilibrium system. The zonal portion BTW can have about a 0.6 C impact on “surface” temperature per Brierley. That is three times the 0.2 C “natural variability” wiggle.

That is a neat little graph of the meridional heat flux. Zonal, basically ENSO on steroids, produces the 150, 400, 1070 and 1220 year pseudo-cycles because of the Drake Passage bottle neck delays or meters ocean heat transfer.

Now that the “shell” part of the physics has been done to death, people are finally getting around to the heart of the physics, the black body source.

That is a good Video BTW, Amazing how smooth sine waves can produce abrupt changes with a little lag here and there. Its all in the wiggles :)

Thanks for the link and the info. As far as I can see, this study points to three stable states that Aquaplanet can attain: Snowball; Glacial; Interglacial.

The authors appear to make the same point I made (or attempted to make) to Capn D: you cannot get out of an albedo-locked icehouse without invoking a change in forcing and the standard position is that CO2 was responsible for the terminations of Snowball Earth states:

These similarities raise the intriguing possibility that multiple states could exist in the real coupled climate system and furthermore that they could have played a role in past (and future) climatic evolution. This also raises the important question of how the system can transition between states. The inner variability of the coupled ocean-atmosphere-sea ice system appears unlikely to trigger transitions, at least in our configuration. One has therefore to invoke (slowly) varying external forcings such a s orbital parameters and CO2 concentrations. What are the magnitude and duration of the perturbations necessary to push the system from one state to the other and what are the time-scale of those transitions?

This agrees exactly with what I have been trying to explain to Capn Dallas:

Multiple equilibrium states, that might be ‘accessed’ suddenly as external forcing parameters slowly change (e.g. orbital parameters, greenhouse gas concentrations, continental drift …) and pass through ‘tipping points’ (see the review by Lenton et al., 2008), could have played a role in such climate excursions. In the context of global climate change in response to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, if multiple equilibria exist then the possibility of massive (and possibly abrupt) climate shifts in response to slow changes, would have to be taken very seriously, even if the chance of such an event were very unlikely.

If we assume that Rose is correct and there are multiple equilibrium states for the climate, then if we increase GHG forcing enough the logical “flip” would be from Holocene-type interglacial to Eocene-type hothouse.

BBD, “I stopped reading right there when you tipped over into radiative physics denial. Sky Dragon stuff. Crankery. End of conversation.”

Why am I not surprised? It is not radiant physics denial it is radiant physic perspective. That atmosphere responds to the ocean. In the video, the ice edge is estimated to be poleward of any latitude receiving 30 Wm-2 of ocean heat transport. open water area is the major driver of climate. Without open water the atmosphere cannot respond to the source of its energy the ocean black body.

The video is very good, but I do have one disagreement. Tidal forcing makes it more difficult to enter a snowball and easier to exit a snow ball. Tidal forcing also increases OHT. His water belt world is the most likely “cold” state.

BBD, I’d rather live in an interglacial than in a glacial or an icebox. We can’t make it hot enough to be unbearable, and Nature can certainly make it cold enough to be so, and more.
==================

BBD, now to tie hypothesis with observations. The hypothesis is that which stable state is obtained depends on OHT. The same forcing can create all 3 stable states depending upon this transfer. Does CO2 cause changes in OHT is the question that is interesting. I can’t explain the change in Gulf Stream transport over the last millenium or so. Perhaps you can.

BBD, I have no reason to doubt CO2 will cause warming. If it is a primary player in the scheme of climate is the question. If it doesn’t control OHT there are serious doubts that it is. It could, I haven’t decided it doesn’t but the obeservations are not indicative that it does. To add on to the graph of Gulf Stream transport I linked the recent measurements indicate no trend. Not what one would expect if CO2 was the driver.

That was as unpleasant as it was transparent. You plummet in my estimation.

Say what? You made a specific claim about what someone said, and when I examined it, the claim seemed false. So I asked if a comment was deleted. I also examined the closest evidence supporting your claim I could find in case you had made a mistake. I found it unconvincing

The worst I did was suggest you were wrong. If that makes me plummet in your estimation, you have serious issues.

As previously, you exhibit a penchant for being tenaciously wrong. Your own link does not support your argument. You oblige me to repeat the relevant quotes:

Multiple equilibrium states, that might be ‘accessed’ suddenly as external forcing parameters slowly change (e.g. orbital parameters, greenhouse gas concentrations, continental drift …) and pass through ‘tipping points’ (see the review by Lenton et al., 2008), could have played a role in such climate excursions. In the context of global climate change in response to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, if multiple equilibria exist then the possibility of
massive (and possibly abrupt) climate shifts in response to slow changes, would have to be taken very seriously, even if the chance of such an event were very unlikely.

And:

These similarities raise the intriguing possibility that multiple states could exist in the real coupled climate system and furthermore that they could have played a role in past
(and future) climatic evolution. This also raises the important question of how the system can transition between states. The inner variability of the coupled ocean-atmosphere-sea ice system appears unlikely to trigger transitions, at least in our configuration. One has therefore to invoke (slowly) varying external forcings such a s orbital parameters and CO2 concentrations. What are the magnitude and duration of the perturbations necessary to push the system from one state to the other and what are the time-scale of those transitions?

One must read what the words actually say rather than invent most of the meaning yourself.

BBD, I could cite the appropriate portions of the paper to support anything I say and if that wasn’t clear cite the portions of the presentation I linked. I see no reason to continue this discussion because, as I recall, the last in length discussion we had you were arguing OHT didn’t and couldn’t matter. The fact that we are arguing over a paper that states it does matter never having occurred to you I suppose.

The inner variability of the coupled ocean-atmosphere-sea ice system appears unlikely to trigger transitions, at least in our configuration. One has therefore to invoke (slowly) varying external forcings such a s orbital parameters and CO2 concentrations.

You are wrong. You were wrong. You will continue to be wrong until you learn to read the words.

This is just like last time.

All attempts to deny the role of GHG forcing in climate change fail because they run counter to the evidence.

BBD, just like last time when I kept telling you the models showed OHT matters? Yes, exactly like last time. So show me where I said OHT magically happens or stop bothering me with a paragraph that counters nothing I have said.

You would think everyone would see the use of government-funded propaganda for political purposes as anathema to basic principles of scientific reason and individual liberty. It should be alarming even to global warming alarmists that the EPA can be used for Leftist revolutionary purposes.

We need to engage in an overhaul of the language. Everything we subsidize that contributes no value to society should be called what it is– social welfare. And, when we see that we not even getting ‘social welfare’ in return for our GIFT, we need to put our money elsewhere.

Continued funding of the EPA, for example, is social welfare — a GIFT to government bureaucrats who openly are using executive power to push the ideology of Euro-communism in America.

As far as I know Max_CH and Pekka are the only Euro-commies who show up here, and both seem harmless to me. I’m more concerned about those kangaroo kissers, beet eaters, or whatever they are called. They are descendants of criminals.

I come from a long line of Scottish engineers, inventors
accompliished musicians and jokers,Max_Oh Kay. Don’t
knpw what you come from but somethinng leads me ter
suspect they might be a poor spirited lot.

Peter Davis writes “How do you isolate any one variable from all the others so that any effect on another can be estimated/measured/verified in an open system?”

I agree with you. But if you are discussing this with Steven Mosher or lolwot, they claim that not only CAN this be done but it HAS BEEN done. They dont provide any details whatsoever, but they claim that since climate sensitivity has been MEASURED, this has been done.

We know that it hasn’t, but it is difficulot having a discussion with Steven and lolwot when they make these claims, and wont discuss the issue in a proper scientific manner.

Jim, I find your claim that sensitivity has not and can not be measured as intellectually dishonest based on the criteria of #6.

6. Employing double standards or “Your evidence is unacceptable (because it’s your evidence)”. This is a question of how high the bar is set for the acceptance of evidence – the bar is set at a much higher level for the other party, while it is set far lower for his/her own evidence.

It is my impression that you hold a very high standard of acceptance for the measurement of CS than you do for other highly uncertain measurements (estimates) we make and employ usefully in scientific discourse. I think you hold this position because you believe anyone who accepts current CS estimates as being an activist for CO2 mitigation or as an extremist bent on pushing an environmental agenda. It has biased your thinking, no?

In addition, I find your arguments wrt to this topic also meet the criteria of #10.

10. Ignoring [partial] defeat or See Sign #1 An intellectually dishonest speaker/writer will NEVER admit that the other side has found a hole in their argument. You will never see them congratulate an opponent on finding a flaw in their argument and they will use all of the other signs if necessary to draw your attention away from the subject.

For some reason you steadfastly hold on to this idea that estimates and measurements are two separate and distinct things. Steven Mosher has, with the patients of a saint, given countless examples showing how these two are the same. You have never acknowledged this flaw in your argument. You have never acknowledged estimates are measurements and continue with your argument that CS has never or can never be measured and thus CO2 poses no threat. Will you acknowledge an estimate is a measurement?

John Carpenter, you write “For some reason you steadfastly hold on to this idea that estimates and measurements are two separate and distinct things.”

Absolutely correct. That is what I was taught in Physics 101, and that is what I believe is fundamental to the scientific method. If you can show me how estimates and measurements are NOT two seperate things, I would be interested.

You also write “Will you acknowledge an estimate is a measurement?”

No I will not. An estimate and a measurement are two completely different things. My authoirity for this is the Concise Oxford Dictionary.
measure Ascertain extent or quantity of (thing) by comparison with a fixed unit
estimate Approximate judgement (of number, amount etc.)

With that said, you also write “Do you feel this is a misrepresentation of your argument?” None whatsoever.

First your question. “can you show one measurement that is not an estimate?”

You are playing semantic sillybuggers. I am not going to get philospohical amd attempt to answer the question, as it is a complete red herring; just like Steven Mosher. I counter. Can you show me one estimate that is a measurement?

Now. Sorry to be longwinded, but let me tell you a story of the Practical Physics Lab in my freshman year. It was the middle of WWII, and the lab was very short of staff. There was a wonderful old gentleman by the name of Searle, who had retired many years before the war started. I dont think he ever graduated, but served in the labs for his whole career. He was very practical, and we had Searle’s apparatus for measuring this, and Searle’s apparatus for measuring that.

He ran the first year lab, and he would minutely query every student to satisfy himself that we knew what we were measuring. Woe betide anyone who dared to mention the word “estimate”, or suggest that anything was “near enough”. Should that happen Searle would ponderously leave that lab, and come back with a huge cardboard medal, written on which was “Searle’s Order of Near Enough”, which he would solemnly hang it on the offending student’s apparatus.

Yes, Searle taught me the difference between an estimate and a measurement, and I have never forgotten it.

“You are playing semantic sillybuggers. I am not going to get philospohical amd attempt to answer the question, as it is a complete red herring”

Intellectual dishonesty #2.

Measurement is really a philosophic idea, isn’t it? What really is a standard unit? When you measure temperature, what is really being measured? A measurement can always get parced down to something smaller. What is the smallest thing we know? How is that measured? What about the biggest thing? What is big? Sometimes you have to sort of gaze out the window and ponder these things to understand that not all is as it appears.

So when we measure, we have more confidence in measurements linked to standard units of measure. We have defined them so we all know what we are agreeing (or disagreeing) about wrt to comparing measurements.
We need guidelines for measurements and standards give us the guidelines. But really, standards are arbitrarily agreed upon by a consensus… Heh… Of people.

Your story about Searle is interesting. You use one single authority in your life to define your belief in what a measurement is. Where is your intellectual curiosity to challenge that belief. Where is the skepticism? This example of yours is also an example of intellectual dishonesty #9. Surely you can get past some of the ideas learned in Physics 101 as being introductory ideas?

I suppose we could ask if Searle’s postion has every been validated or proven. ? So much for Cripwell’s scientific rigor.

His other authority is the dictionary!

wow. just wow.

But at the base of his argument is something even more silly. The notion that if we cannot “measure something” ( make really really accurate estimates ) that we know nothing about it.

Jim cannot measure my height right now. He doesnt know that I am taller than a nanometer and shorter than a mile. Because he cannot measure me, he knows nothing about my height.

And it gets siller. I tell him I weigh 200 lbs and ask him to estimate how much I would weigh if my weight doubled and he doesnt even know that… because well my weight hasnt doubled and he can only know what he measures.

I dont think Searle would approve of Cripwells characterization of how we come to know things through science.

Peter, you write ““Can you show me one estimate that is a measurement?”
Yes, all of them.”

I am sorry, Peter. We are wasting each other’s time. If you are serious about claiming that every estimate is a measurement, then clearly we are not speaking the same language. I am astonished that anyone could make such a stupid statement on Climate Etc.

Would you mind if I copy this for posterity, and quote you on any occasion that I choose?

Steven, you write “But at the base of his argument is something even more silly. The notion that if we cannot “measure something” ( make really really accurate estimates ) that we know nothing about it.”

If I wasn’t retired and have little else useful to do, I would not even bother to comment. But I do resent it very strongly when you put words into my mouth and completely lie about what I claim. I have NEVER said that if we cannot measure something, therefore we know nothing about it. I defy you to provide such a quotation.

What I do say is that if a hypothesis, such as CAGW, requires a measurement, such as climate senasitivity, to prove that it is correct, then if we cannot measure climate sensitivity, then CAGW remains a hypothesis.

“Would you mind if I copy this for posterity, and quote you on any occasion that I choose?”

Jim, not at all. Just be sure that you cite me, John Carpenter, and not Peter.

Jim, you really to to look at measurement from a frame of reference. What is our frame of reference of measuring how long our foot is compared to how long are the atoms in my foot? How hot is it outside compared to how sensitive is atmospheric temperature to increased CO2 concentration. From one frame of reference we can make a measurement that appears to have little uncertainty while from others the uncertainty is larger. An estimate is a measurement that I would argue has more uncertainty, yet it is still a measurement.

Jim, you make a distinction between AGW and CAGW. Tell me, how do you measure the difference between the two. When do you go from non-catastrophic to catastrophic? Is there a dictionary definition of this too? How do we measure what catastrophic is in climate? Why do you make that distinction and why do you think it is linked to CS? Sincere question.

A theoretician is defined as “one who formulates, studies, or is expert in the theory of a science or an art.”

A rational (or scientific) skeptic is one who questions “whether claims are supported by empirical research and have reproducibility, as part of a methodological norm pursuing ‘the extension of certified knowledge’.”

The CAGW premise, as outlined by IPCC in its AR4 report, is based on greenhouse theory, but is not supported by empirical evidence.

It’s just that simple.

Mosh and Cripwell can debate until both are blue in the face, but they will never agree on the validity of the CAGW hypothesis, simply because they use different yardsticks to measure this validity.

Both may be “intellectually honest” – but they are talking two different languages.

kim, it is Jim Cripwell that has built himself an impenetrable semantic bunker. He won’t believe estimates however many separate lines of evidence go into that estimate. Global average temperature is an estimate. GHG forcing is an estimate. He won’t even take them with their error bars. Is that you, too? At least they can’t get to you in that bunker, kim. You will feel safe there with your hands over your ears and eyes, and just Jim Cripwell to tell you what to believe in his little enclosed world.

You know, it’s an interesting thread on being Intellectually honest about how you communicate with others. I tried to give some examples to Jim about how his arguments appear to me to be intellectually dishonest. Jim has decided that it is easier for him to quit the discussion rather than to expand his ideas. That is not to say I have never quit a discussion with anyone out of personal frustration, I have. But the thing of it is, Jim will be back tomorrow or the next day saying the exact same thing again, and then again next week and again the week after. I know this to be certain. How am I certain of this? I have measured it. I have read his argument time and again with consistency to know he will use it again. It is really the only argument Jim has. I can predict with absolute certainty he will bring this exact same argument to CE in the very near future regardless of what the topic is. I have measured it over the last year, I could trend it if I so desired. He has not made the same argument again…yet…. Yet I know it will happen again based upon careful measurement of past behavior. Measurement is a wonderful thing.

Will Jim ever change? Will he ever consider different ideas that are outside of his comfort zone? Will he intellectually engage in conversation in a way that shows he is interested in learning? Based on the measured responses I have seen, it appears to be no…. Yet despite those measurements, I am still UNCERTAIN about that, there is always hope.

Funny, I am certain he will make the CS measurement/estimation argument again, yet I am uncertain he will ever learn anything new from the discussions he has with people like you and me about it. All from the same data set!

Let me give you my take on this (Jim Cripwell can either agree or give you another take).

– “AGW” (anthropogenic global warming) is the hypothesis that human emissions of GH gases have contributed to the measured increase in their atmospheric concentrations and that this has resulted in a perceptible global warming impact.

– “CAGW” has been outlined in detail by IPCC in its AR4 report: it is the premise that:

1. human GHGs have been the cause of most of the observed warming since ~1950 [AR4 WGI SPM, p.10]

3. this represents a serious potential threat to humanity and our environment from AGW in the range of 1.8°C to 6.4°C by the end of this century with increase in global sea level of up to 0.59 meters [AR4 WGI SPM, p.13]

5. with resulting flooding of several coastal cities and regions, crop failures and famines, loss of drinking water for millions from disappearing glaciers, intensification and expansion of wildfires, severe loss of Amazon forests, decline of corals, extinction of fish species, increase in malnutrition, increase in vector borne and diarrheal diseases, etc. [AR4 WGII]

There is no official IPCC mention of CAGW. The C part is the subjective individual interpretation of the social impacts of AGW. To me AGW is the scientific part in WG1. CAGW is social science effects on people, but also on ecology to the extent that people care, mostly seen in WG2. There are some who think AGW is good, so maybe they would use the term GAGW instead of CAGW, but AGW itself is irrespective of the human consequences. An objective scientific discussion would focus on AGW which covers basically climate change itself (temperature, precipitation, land/ice cover changes, etc.) The C part is where the emotional reflexes come in.

Max, I finally understand what is happening. There are clearly people who think that the words “measurement” and “estimate” mean the same thing. No wonder they dont understand what I write. There is clearly no point is discussing this issue any more of CE. I am sure a lot of people will say “Thank heaven!!”.

So if it is not possible to isolate the effect of CO2 (anthropogenic or otherwise) from the effects of everything else on global average temperature (IMO a pretty nebulous quantity, given that climate effects are experienced regionally) then the estimate of climate sensitivity used in the climate models is probably not particularly robust.

Gosh, when a righteously honest & foresighted trinity of Ronald Reagan, Pope Francis, and James Hansen all stand united in regard to sobering environmental issues … it kinda makes an impression on a person, heh?

The governments’ growing intrusiveness into our lives parallels its current interests. It wants to pass laws we all are required to pay for and follow, based on what the climate will be in 50 years. And yet, based on the science, the most dispositive indication of our future ruin is that we continue to pay and vote for a government that still is putting targets on the backs of our individual liberties when it comes to paying for governments’ global warming propaganda.

Climate change research has been a huge hole in the ocean into which the federal government poured billions of dollars that have been stripped from the economy to feed the government-education climatism machine. Western academia knows us well and formulated a simple plan: pretend there is a scientific consensus about global warming, ignore conflicting information, demonize scientific skeptics, bastardize the language and count on the intellectual laziness of an idle and brain-dead secular-socialist society to look for the easiest path to the next day’s bowl of hash.

I told you about the fool on the hill
I tell you man he living there still
Well here’s another place you can be
Listen to me.
Fixing a hole in the ocean
Trying to make a dove-tail joint-yeah
Looking through a glass onion.

After years of sniping at the heels of America during two terms of clawing the country’s eyes out because Bush stood tall against the UN and Kyoto and had the courage to support America with his whole heart we now see a majority of the country who hate capitalism and the American experience of man’s God-given right to individual liberty and personal responsibility and all the markers are being changed to direct everyone to Euro-communism’s bridge to nowhere in a bus that is being driven by some of the smallest thinkers humanity has ever served up on a shingle.

Bush distinguished himself by starting an unnecessary war and leaving office with a 22% approval rating, the lowest presidential rating in recorded history. The Republican Party has never recovered, and as we know it now, may be on the road to extinction. GOP now means Goofy Old Poots.

Who do you prefer George Washington or Mao Tse-Tung? Do you think the answer is simple?

■ If you are a Tibetan Buddhist monk, you prefer a God-fearing protector of personal and religious freedom like George Washington

■ If you are a tenured professor in liberal fascist academia, then Ward Churchill is more inspiring than Winston Churchill, the mass murderer Mao is your philosopher, and Bush-haters Castro and Chavez are your comrades.

If you are talking wetware, most guys are driven by the want of a beautiful, strong woman who will birth and protect his offspring. To do this, man has to be an effective problem solver valued by the male tribe. To solve problems quickly and effectively, one must suppress vanity and pride to avoid making critical or fatal errors.

I don’t know what sort of Dale Carnegie fantasy world you live in, but all of the successful people I know have a strong talent checking their ego at the door. It’s just common sense and the #1 topic of all of the great philosophers through the ages. Here is a link that I am sure you will parse into a pride= success victory lap so you can high-five with your fellow deniers.

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had compleatly overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.

Somewhere along the line a big part of growing up is that we learn that every idea is not a good idea. Some ideas are better than others. Some beliefs are better than others. The bigger government gets the more people we insulate from the consequences of the bad ideas that burden the rest of us.

BTW, “the 1990’s” is the 1990-1999 period. The following explanation is from Wiki:

“The 1990s, also known as “the Nineteen Nineties” or abbreviated as “the Nineties” or “the ’90s”, was the tenth and final decade within the 20th century that began on January 1, 1990, and ended on December 31, 1999.”

I have a brother with a mental illness…delusional disorder. Tonally, his delusions and his defense of them do not seem very different from those of some of the alarmists on this blog. No matter how much evidence you give to my brother that he’s not being followed by the FBI and that he’s not a well known figure in the city in which he lives, he’s not to be swayed

In general of course, it’s deeply unfair to pathologize people simply on the basis of their beliefs. Still, at a certain point one has to wonder…

Max_OK,
Let’s try this one last time. Whether you want to concede that there’s been an actual pause in global warming over the last 16 years, will you at least concede that:

A. That the IPCC models have erred on the high side wrt to the predicted temperature rise over the last 16+ years.

Assuming that you will make this concession (because if you won’t then there really is likely something wrong with you), will you then concede that

B. the case for CAGW has likely in some small degree at least, been weakened thereby.

A. Sure, but so what? That could change as we get farther into the forecast horizon. Besides, the models predicted rising temperatures, and temperatures rose, so the models got the direction of change right.

B. Nope, the case for CAGW doesn’t rest on global temperature rising in a straight line, with no dips and pauses.

I of course agree with the assertion that we need to be more self monitoring on this issue of intellectual honesty. I would recommend Walter Kaufman’s Critique of Religion and Philosophy and Faith of a Heretic as a profound exposition of the subject. These works seem to still be in print even though in an era of “communication” being confused with science and post modernism they are quite out of fashion. And that is troubling in other fields as well. Kaufman would be incomprehensible to a whole generation brought up on cultural self-loathing.

My particular viewpoint is that honesty can only really happen through robust and open debate, helped by a robust and constant critique of prevailing opinions. And that issue is what brought me to climate science in the first place. I found a lot more technical content than I expected on fundamental science (thanks Judith and Chief) but also a field that compares in its public faces not too favorably with what I would have expected and with surprising gaps in its technical tools.

All those who fish out Arrhenius as if whatever they then say about carbon dioxide raising the temperature of the Earth several degrees is proved, need to explain exactly what you mean.

Jim D | April 20, 2013 at 1:42 pm | The ideas I believe in go back a hundred years to Arrhenius, that doubling CO2 causes about 1 C of warming, and that given time the ocean warms by 1 C and that maintains the relative humidity by increasing atmospheric water vapor about 7%, which causes the water vapor feedback to more than double the CO2 effect.

Where did Arrhenius say this? Show his workings.

Arno Arrak | April 20, 2013 at 10:57 pm | Steven – apparently you really do want to start a fight. You are dead wrong that AGW is true. It is simply false. ….. Let’s start with carbon dioxide. It is absolutely true that it will absorb infrared radiation and the energy of this absorbed radiation will warm the gas. Arrhenius new that much.

Did he? He was using carbonic acid not carbon dioxide.

From what I’ve read about him, he knew nothing about the atmosphere or heat transfer, got Fourier wrong because he appears to have misread what Fourier was saying, and, his own bias overruled common sense for the reasons ice ages come and go, that was the setting for this, in that he was a chemist and knew carbon dioxide was insignificant in amount yet was putting this against the ground breaking work of James Croll about the Sun’s cycles and albedo and much more.

I wonder if those promoting carbon dioxide as the great driver of global temperature, who still can’t show it has anything at all to do with driving us into and out of ice ages, got their irrational sense of scale from Arrhenius?

I would like those who think AGW is true and claim “Arrhenius proved it”, to actually provide exactly what Arrhenius is supposed to have proved.

The irony here is that the AGWGreenhouseEffect doesn’t even have carbonic acid in the atmosphere…, it has no rain in its Carbon Cycle.

Steven Mosher | April 21, 2013 at 3:08 pm | Note that when arrhenius predicted that adding C02 would cause a increase in temps that he did NOT predict that wiggles would disappear.

He made different predictions about carbonic acid – what are his predictions for carbon dioxide and how did he work out and test this?

He made a prediction: the data supports that prediction it does not contradict that prediction.

Please fetch.

This is a claim that all AGW/CAGWs make – yet I have never ever been shown anything from Arrhenius that proves any of the claims you, generic, make about carbon dioxide when I have requested this in the past.

Please, if there is any honesty in your AGW/CAGW claims about carbon dioxide which you, generic, claim is based on Arrhenius’s proof of this, then fetch it in its entirety, so we can examine it together.

p263, section IV is where Arrhenius goes into how he calculates the warming from increasing CO2 accounting for water vapor. The ideas are the same now, only the numbers are refined based on better knowledge of them. He did it for different latitude bands, and knowledge of the global atmosphere was limited too, so it was remarkably good that he got a ballpark estimate (not measurement).

Jim D | April 22, 2013 at 1:18 am | http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/1/18/Arrhenius.pdf
p263, section IV is where Arrhenius goes into how he calculates the warming from increasing CO2 accounting for water vapor. The ideas are the same now, only the numbers are refined based on better knowledge of them. He did it for different latitude bands, and knowledge of the global atmosphere was limited too, so it was remarkably good that he got a ballpark estimate (not measurement).

MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW. JUNE, 1901
“KNUT ANGSTROM ON ATMOSPHERIC ABSORPTION.
…
“The remainder of Angstrom’s paper is devoted to a destructive criticism of the theories put forth by the Swedish chemist, S. Arrhenius, in which the total absorption of CO, is quite inadmissibly inferred from data which include the combined absorption of CO, and the vapor of water. On these incorrect premises Arrheuius has founded an hypothesis as
to the cause of the Ice Age, attributing it to variation in the amount of atmospheric CO,. The geologists who have adopted Arrhenius’s views should recall that his hypothesis evidently fails in the light of present knowledge of the absorptive powers of carbon dioxid.
Undoubtedly the aqueous vapor powerfully absorbs the terrestrial radiation, but no quantitative estimates of its effect are made by Professor Angstrom.”

Arrhenius didn’t know what he was doing, didn’t understand the figures he was reading from other scientists, was mixing up carbon dioxide and carbonic acid and aqueous water – and that’s besides getting Fourier wrong, badly wrong – Fourier didn’t say the atmosphere was like the glass of a greenhouse, and his figures for heat transfer included radiation, see http://greenhouse.geologist-1011.net/ From which:

“Arrhenius’ Backradiation mechanism did, in fact, duplicate the radiative heat transfer component by adding this component to the conductive heat flow between the earth’s surface and the atmosphere, when thermal conduction includes both contact and radiative modes of heat transfer between bodies in thermal contact. Moreover, the temperature of the earth’s surface and the temperature in a greenhouse are adequately explained by elementary physics. Consequently, the dubious explanation presented by the “Greenhouse Effect” hypothesis is an unnecessary complication. Furthermore, this hypothesis has neither direct experimental confirmation nor direct empirical evidence of a material nature. Thus the notion of “Anthropogenic Global Warming”, which rests on the “Greenhouse Effect”, also has no real foundation.”

And:
“The “Greenhouse Effect” was originally defined around the hypothesis that visible light penetrating the atmosphere is converted to heat on absorption and emitted as infrared, which is subsequently trapped by the opacity of the atmosphere to infrared. In Arrhenius (1896, p. 237) we read:

“Fourier maintained that the atmosphere acts like the glass of a hothouse, because it lets through the light rays of the sun but retains the dark rays from the ground.”

“This quote from Arrhenius establishes the fact that the “Greenhouse Effect”, far from being a misnomer, is so-called because it was originally based on the assumption that an atmosphere and the glass of a greenhouse are the same in their workings. Interestingly, Fourier doesn’t even mention hothouses or greenhouses, and actually stated that in order for the atmosphere to be anything like the glass of a hotbox, such as the experimental aparatus of de Saussure (1779), the air would have to solidify while conserving its optical properties (Fourier, 1827, p. 586; Fourier, 1824, translated by Burgess, 1837, pp. 11-12).

In spite of Arrhenius’ misunderstanding of Fourier, the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (11th Edition) reflects his initial opening description of the “Greenhouse Effect”:

“Greenhouse Effect noun the trapping of the sun’s warmth in the planet’s lower atmosphere, due to the greater transparency of the atmosphere to visible radiation from the sun than to infrared radiation emitted from the planet’s surface.”

“These descriptions of the “Greenhouse Effect” all evade the key question of heat transfer.”

And that’s what none of these “estimates” have, they’re just pulled out of nowhere without taking the natural weather systems of heat transfer, of conduction and convection of real gases with volume and attraction and weight subject to gravity – which means having to include that hot air rises and cold air sinks and having to include the Water Cycle and having to include rain in the Carbon Cycle.

So Arrehenius has proved nothing, certainly not in that paper, but in general he’s not even on the right track about the natural properties and processes, including with his strange idea that visible light heats matter…

So Jim D, regardless how many learned discussions there are on climate sensitivity, the numbers are completely made up when those discussing this adhere to AGW fake fisics premises.

And what’s worse, when they then refer back to Arrhenius as if everything is proved in this paper and you can can read for yourself how confused he was..

So, you don’t have 100 years of proof. The reality is that even then Arrhenius didn’t know what he was on about; not only didn’t he understand anything about the atmosophere and heat transfer in other papers and serious more learned scientists debunked him and he was ignored. Until Callendar came along with his anti coal agenda and working method of science fraud to get his figures, with which method Keeling complied. Read the page from Timothy Casey on volcanic CO2 on the last link – there is no way Keeling could tell the difference between volcanic carbon dioxide and “man-made”, so why do you think he went to one of the world’s greatest volcanic carbon producing islands and began measuring on the world’s biggest active volcano?

Aren’t you appalled by the skullduggery to hide the volcanic influence as Timothy Casey shows? If you read the Mauna Loa site which gives details of how they measure, you’ll see that it is totally arbitrary where they “decide” the cut off between volcanic and “man made” – this mythical “background” which Keeling claimed could be measure anywhere..

Arrhenius proved nothing about carbon dioxide. He was discredited by his peers and his greatly flawed work was brought back by science fraudsters for their own agendas, not giving a damn about the science..

Myrrh, yes Angstrom (son of the famous one) was the original skeptic. As a follower of Angstrom you must be disappointed that his name has disappeared into the fog of scientific history for no other reason than that he was wrong. You asked for where Arrhenius’s paper was, and I showed it to you with the relevant section. Now you can see that the ideas do go as far back as 1896, and were clearly stated by Arrhenius, which is what you wanted to see. He also addressed clouds in an addendum which I found interesting. He really had thought of the complete problem. Yes, they used to refer to carbon dioxide as carbonic acid, its name in solution (like H Cl is sometimes still called hydrochloric acid when it is a gas). He used CO2 in the paper in case you thought he really meant it was in solution. He also knew its content was .03 % which was accurate, and that with the surface dominated by ocean the relative humidity of ‘aqueous vapour’ would be maintained by it.

This poem is worth another look. An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope in 1734

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A Being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas’ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much;
Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus’d;
Still by himself, abus’d or disabus’d;
Created half to rise and half to fall;
Great Lord of all things, yet a prey to all,
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl’d;
The glory, jest and riddle of the world.

Go, wondrous creature! mount where science guides,
Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;
Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,
Correct old time, and regulate the sun;
Go, soar with Plato to th’ empyreal sphere,
To the first good, first perfect, and first fair;
Or tread the mazy round his followers trod,
And quitting sense call imitating God;
As Eastern priests in giddy circles run,
And turn their heads to imitate the sun.
Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule—
Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!

The measurement issue and the degree of confidence that the effect of CO2 alone can ever be discerned without reference to a great number of other influences, that is exhibited by orthodox climate science leaves me pretty much confused.

I often think of this one by Whitman when sick and weary of these endless climate discussions.

WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; 5
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

This is the hour O soul, thy flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, that day erased,
the lessons done,
Then fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering
the themes thou lovest best
Night, sleep and the stars.

You have a beautiful, soaring spirit Beth. It’s hard to imagine finding your counterpart amongst the ranks of Max Oh Kay and Mr. Wot and all the rest of that drab, wearisome gang. Which ought to tell people something, right there….

My grades of the skeptical spectrum, just from their science views:
Grade A: allow for positive feedback, sensitivity in the range 1-2 C per doubling, but don’t allow for IPCC range 2-4.5 C per doubling.
Grade B: allow for CO2 with no feedback or negative feedback, don’t allow for positive feedback.
Grade C: don’t believe that forcing can be calculated for doubling CO2, goes with disbelief in energy balance constraints or no-feedback response, still believe CO2 affects IR, possibly don’t believe IR changes affect surface temperature.
Grade D: don’t believe CO2 trace-gas has any effect on IR.
Possibly Grade C has some sub-classes who don’t agree with each other, but I think the others are well defined.

the skeptical spectrum, just from their science views:
Grade A: allow for positive feedback, sensitivity in the range 1-2 C per doubling, but don’t allow for IPCC range 2-4.5 C per doubling

This group has apparently emerged as a result of

a) the current “pause” despite unabated human GHG emissions
b) the failure of IPCC forecasts of 0.2C (or 0.225C) warming per decade
c) the many recent (partly) observation-based studies pointing to a 2xCO2 ECS of around ½ the earlier IPCC estimates, which were based on model predictions

You give this group a “grade A”. (So would I, since I am a member of this group. Duh!)

There is also the group in the non-skeptical (or “believer”) spectrum who:

sticks with the previous high model-predicted ECS estimates of 2-4.5 C per doubling by ignoring or rationalizing away the new observation-based studies and current warming pause

In the modern era there are processes that add to and take from global temperatures. These are global in impact and confound any attempt to simply project temperatures forward. AOS have their own issues of chaotic complexity – which confound any attempt to produce a single deterministic solution.

One of these is the orbital eccentricities currently teetering at the edge of the paleoclimatic tipping zone. Another of these processes is solar activity that amplifies through dynamical climate processes to produce the emergent behaviour seen in the climate system. Thus we have a 1000 year solar Grand Maxima last century – a 1000 year maxima in El Nino – and much variation in these interconnected global patterns over much longer.

‘These anomalies modulate high-latitude zonal winds, with El Niño (La Niña) conditions causing reduced (enhanced) zonal wind speeds and subsequent reduced (enhanced) summer sea salt deposition at LD. Over the last 1010 yr, the LD summer sea salt (LDSSS) record has exhibited two below-average (El Niño–like) epochs, 1000–1260 ad and 1920–2009 ad, and a longer above-average (La Niña–like) epoch from 1260 to 1860 ad. Spectral analysis shows the below-average epochs are associated with enhanced ENSO-like variability around 2–5 yr, while the above-average epoch is associated more with variability around 6–7 yr. The LDSSS record is also significantly correlated with annual rainfall in eastern mainland Australia. While the correlation displays decadal-scale variability similar to changes in the interdecadal Pacific oscillation (IPO), the LDSSS record suggests rainfall in the modern instrumental era (1910–2009 ad) is below the long-term average. In addition, recent rainfall declines in some regions of eastern and southeastern Australia appear to be mirrored by a downward trend in the LDSSS record, suggesting current rainfall regimes are unusual though not unknown over the last millennium.’

If you look – the El Nino dominance 100 years ago and the La Nina dominance up to the modern period can be seen in the 11,000 year ENSO proxy of Moy 2002.

There are both multi-decadal patterns and far longer term variation of the global system. The germane question is much of recent warming was natural, what the current cool multi-decadal mode means for the immediate temperature trend and what the potential is for longer term cooling.

Simple memes for simple space cadets notwithstanding – the immediate decadal future seems to hold little warming and much is uncertain after that.

Think of all the people who have something named after them – Archimedes, Newton, Boyle, Hooke, Avogadro, Planck – this list goes on and on – and tell me if they were intellectually honest, and why I should care.

Do you really give a rodent’s rectum?

Does it matter?

Facts are neither honest or dishonest.

In any case, the concept of “honesty” is culture dependent. Why must some people seek to improve their gross domestic happiness by trying to impose their standards on people who obviously hew to their own standards?

Is it intellectually honest to say that the Earth has indubitably cooled during the last few billion years?

Who knows for sure whether the Earth was really a molten blob in the past?
If I believe that Earth has cooled, and will continue to do so, why is my “intellectual honesty” (or lack thereof) of any concern to anyone else? I certainly can’t understand why this should be so. And yes, I’m lazy enough not to care too much, either.

No-one has mentioned the word ‘impartiality’ yet. If there is no impartiality, its difficulty to have intellectual honesty. I’d like to ask people like Willis Eschenbach, Nic Lewis and Steven McIntyre whether they were motivated to become involved due a genuine interest in climate science or, if perhaps it was more a dislike of the political implications that came with the acceptance of the idea that GH gas emissions are a potential problem?

The question I ask myself is do I have skin in this game or am I merely curious. The answer with climate change is that whatever the science says – the rational policy response seems to remain the same and has for decades. The way forward is with energy innovation in the medium term and multi-objective paths I have described endlessly. Evil things like the Copenhagen Consensus priorities and the Millennium Development Goals – even though the latter are UN mandated.

It is perhaps item 6 above that is the most telling – the failure to make any progress has not resulted in any reassessment by many of their goals and objectives. It is a matter of endlessly repeating the same arguments and actions and expecting a different outcome. This is the insanity of the contemporary pissant progressive.

There is perhaps one difference – the world is not warming for a decade to 3 more as a result of these patterns of ocean and atmospheric circulation I also talk endlessly about. The ones that start with hydrology and end with global surface temperature.

‘Unlike El Niño and La Niña, which may occur every 3 to 7 years and last from 6 to 18 months, the PDO can remain in the same phase for 20 to 30 years. The shift in the PDO can have significant implications for global climate, affecting Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activity, droughts and flooding around the Pacific basin, the productivity of marine ecosystems, and global land temperature patterns.’ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703

These patterns will set back carbon mitigation efforts – still desirable – by a generation or more as the world doesn’t warm. The inability of space cadets to see this argues for an inability to process anomalous information – cognitive dissonance – even when it comes from NASA.

One side (IPCC et al.) insist on an agenda driven “forced consensus” process (see Mike Hulme’s essay on the other thread) and the other side (the names you mention plus others) is rationally skeptical of the “consensus” and seeks evidence to support its skepticism by finding holes in the science supporting the consensus view.

The only solution I could see is if IPCC were to abandon its forced consensus process and open its reports to dissenting views, thereby conceding uncertainty on the impact of AGW.

But I do not believe that this is likely to occur, based on the leaked AR5 drafts.

“In general, the result of a measurement (B.2.11) is only an approximation or estimate (C.2.26) of the value of the measurand and thus is complete only when accompanied by a statement of the uncertainty (B.2.18) of that estimate.”

and Section 3.3.1:

“The uncertainty of the result of a measurement reflects the lack of exact knowledge of the value of the measurand (see 2.2). The result of a measurement after correction for recognized systematic effects is still only an estimate of the value of the measurand because of the uncertainty arising from random effects and from imperfect correction of the result for systematic effects”

There are technical and colloquial uses of the words “estimate” and “measurement”.

A sure sign of intellectual laziness is choosing a position and THEN marshaling evidence to support it. The effort can be intellectual to the highest degree, but it’s lazy because it gets honest inquiry exactly backwards. Doing it the right way — deriving conclusions from volumes of evidence — is much harder work.

”Because of the complexity of the climate system, there is heavy reliance on the judgment of experts.”

As I have experienced, experts, in general, tell honestly the judgements they have adopted. Anyhow there are certain problems on those judgements. The quality of their judgements depends on the discipline which the expertese belongs to. Experts certainly strive for truth. However, any judgement of experts, as such, can not be relied on, if you yourself do not understand the bases of that. Especially this is concerning the multi-disciplinary problems related to ‘the complexity of climate system’, On this kind of cases it is coincidental that experts of single disciplines are right. For instance AGW based merely on climate models, where certain essential parameters (e.g. increase of antropogenic CO2 content in atmosphere) are based on asumptions, is only a hypothesis without any empiric evidence.

If an expert is not experienced enough on any so-called cross-disciplinary approach of multi-disciplinary problems, there can be too difficult to find all of potential issues influencing on the recent problem of climate warming. As a consequence any final synthesis to reach a working solution may be impossible.

Any solution is not working reliably enough, if even politicians can not that understand: a risk to fail may be fateful.

That is why, I have tried express a solution easy enough to be understood even by politicians as laymen, according to which the anthropogenic CO2 emissions do not dominate the climate warming:

”According to natural laws, both all the CO2 sources and all the CO2 sinks together control the CO2 content in atmosphere. Continuous striving for dynamic balance makes changes in the sources and/or the sinks cause changes in CO2 content in atmosphere, too. The CO2 sinks determine how much CO2 from the total CO2 emissions stays in atmosphere, according to which the CO2 content in atmosphere is controlled. The recent proportion of a single CO2 emission to the total CO2 emissions determines the share of this CO2 emission in the recent total CO2 content in atmosphere, and as well the recent share in the yearly increase of CO2 content in atmosphere: as the anthropogenic share of recent CO2 emissions to atmosphere is about 4 % at most, the anthropogenic share in the recent CO2 content of 390 ppm in atmosphere is only about 16 ppm at the most, and the anthropogenic share in recent increase of about 2 ppm CO2 per year, is only about 0.08 ppm. You see, that IPCC is totally wrong as in the climate models adopted the recent increase of CO2 content in atmosphere has been totally regarded as anthropogenic.

Even any increase of total CO2 content in atmosphere has been found to follow natural warming and not vice versa.”

It’s remarkable that that the crucial factor in intellectual honesty—the overwhelming desire to illuminate an issue, rather than exploit it for more venal purposes—goes virtually unrecognized here in long list of dictums that focus more upon the PR aspects of presentation rather than upon the content. This is in the spirit of Andre Agassiz camera commercial: “Image is everything!” One wonders how Charles Richter’s oft-quoted warning that “only fools, charlatans and fortune tellers predict earthquakes” would fare by such superficial criteria.

Those pushing the fake fisics of AGW’s Greenhouse Effect are the trolls here – you make unknown to physical reality claims about the properties and process of matter and energy and respond with rudeness because you have no explanations.

I have explained why it can’t. But you’d rather continue pushing the fake fisics onto the next generation to the agenda of people who don’t give a damn about us than admit they have successfully infiltrated the education system and systematically dumbed down basic science for the general population.

The Sun is millions of °C, but their fake fisics takes a three hundred mile layer of visible light around the Sun and “estimates” its temperature from this “peak” and they get 6000°C, and then claim this “peak energy” is practically all visible of the Sun’s radiated energy to reach us – visible a bit of shortwave uv and 1% of near infrared, and no longwave infrared of any significance produced.

(This visible layer is more accurately the first layer of the Sun’s atmosphere, not the Sun’s surface as AGW misdirects).

It is exactly like saying “the incandescent light bulb’s peak energy is in visible therefore it does not radiate any longwave infrared, (which in the real world is the electromagnetic wavelength of heat).

The cleverest tricks are always the simplest changes then reinforced by complex explanations, here this begins with the Planck curve and then the meme full circle that it’s the visible light “we feel as heat”, must be, because the claim is that “visible light heats land and water”.

So no reason the question the “basics”, unless you know differently from traditional science. The meme is set.

So of course they can never find any explanations for how visible light from the Sun heats land and water.

You appear to have a superstitious attachment to the ‘visible’ nature of some light.

Visible to whom? To humans? Cats? Hummingbirds? The visual spectrum varies widely across species of animals. Rattlesnakes can see the infrared spectrum (after a fashion).

Your arbitrary pigeonholing of the spectrum into visible and not visible seems to serve no actual purpose.

Now you’re just being silly. The AGWScienceFiction’s Greenhouse Effect Illusion Energy Budget is built on spurious claims for the visible light from the Sun as seen by humans, the normal understanding of what is visible light, and, I have not been arbitrarily “pigeonholing” the spectrum into visible and invisible – if you’re confused, quote my words which you find confusing, I shall endeavour to enlighten you.

Are you familiar with the observable, measurable effect whereby some materials can absorb blue light and emit it as yellow light (by combining two photons into one, or ‘triplet-triplet annihilation’)?

How does your “non-fake fisics” explain this phenomenon?

You keep making claims about clever tricks. Do you have any experience with cleverness that you could refer us to?

I can certainly provide you with an example of attempts at clever tricks, to distract from the truth of what I’m saying, read your own post.

Jim D | April 23, 2013 at 11:12 pm | Myrrh needs to first explain what he thinks happens to visible light that hits a black object. Somehow it disappears. Absorbed, perhaps?

What I shall explain is that the word “absorbed” is a sleight of hand meme produced by the AGWScienceFiction’s meme producing department to confuse real world physics for the purpose of dumbing down basic science for the general population.

To confuse them so they do not understand the difference between heat and light, because if they did understand the difference between heat and light they would see immediately how stupid the AGWSF claim that “visible light heats the Earth’s land and water” and “there is insignificant amount of longwave infrared radiated by the Sun”, and, “longwave infrared is stopped at TOA by an invisible barrier like the glass of a greenhouse”.

This begins with the AGWSF meme that “all electromagnetic energy is the same and all create heat on being absorbed.”

Which is patently absurd to anyone who knows that the different wavelengths of the spectrum have different properties and processes, and that they do not all create heat on being absorbed. Especially not visible light which cannot, it isn’t big enough to move whole molecules into vibration which is what it takes to heat up matter. Visible light from the Sun converts to chemical energy in the process of photosynthesis, for example.

So, since it is I challenging your AGWSF fake fisics claims, you should first of all tell me how much visible light from the Sun is heating the atmosphere which 98% nitrogen and oxygen and the electrons of these molecules actually absorb visible light from the Sun.

That’s how we get our blue sky, because the electrons of the molecules of these real gases (not the pretend ideal gases of AGWSF), absorb blue visible light from the Sun; this is called reflection/scattering, one of the four possible outcomes of visible and shortwave either side in real world physics which has these in the category electronic transitions.

Visible light from the Sun is not absorbed by molecules of water, not even by the electrons, water is a transparent medium for visible light and so transmits it through unchanged.

Don’t be so hard on yourself. We may have ‘Failed’, but we can still learn.

Try to take it one step at a time. Don’t try explaining your theories to me: while I appreciate the sentiment, and the effort, and I am sincere in congratulating you for the merit of your virtue in wanting to try, we have to admit there is a gulf, a gap, in communication between us yet.

So I’d like if you would let me explain the way I use a few terms, before you address your explanation to me.

The GHE does not depend on the visibility of light, you’re letting yourself get distracted by people a lot cleverer than either of us.

The GHE depends on energy from space that makes it down through the atmosphere to non-clear surfaces (whether clouds or airplanes, weather balloons or the ground or oceans), where ‘clear’ means transparent to that form of energy, whatever it may be.

The energy can be sunlight or moonlight, cosmic rays or alien lasers or the flashes of unicorn farts, so long as it began above the top of the atmosphere (TOA) and made it through the part of the atmosphere transparent to it until it got to the lower stratosphere or lower.

The issue isn’t visibility, it’s transparency.

The upper atmosphere isn’t very transparent to most IR radiation, or what you recognize (a bit wrongly, but why worry about little details) as heat. Most IR radiation from above TOA never makes it to the lower stratosphere. It mostly never strikes anything that isn’t transparent to it inside the shell of the lower stratosphere. Therefore, we don’t care about it, it’s gone before it’s interesting.

Much of the energy — in whatever form — is lost to either albedo or pure re-emission (in the case of some solar ionization) in the upper stratosphere or lower, in clouds or ice or whatnot. We don’t count that, because it remains in a form the atmosphere is transparent to.

But the rest? Well, the electricity that makes a lightbulb incandesce, emitting light and heat and other energy too, it all comes from that energy in forms that have been absorbed and stored up and tapped into and converted, or it comes from nuclear power.

Matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed, but they may be converted under the rules of Conservation of Energy.

So your lightbulb energy, its light and heat, were (almost) all once energy that the atmosphere was transparent to before it was absorbed, stored, tapped into and converted to electrical power.

Apologies Bart R and Jim D, I haven’t been able to get back to this earlier.

The AGWScienceFiction’s Greenhouse Effect Illusion depends on claiming shortwave, mainly visible but a bit of shortwave uv and 1% near infrared, actually physically heats the Earth. It depends on this because it has to pretend that no other source of downwelling radiant heat is available except for that in their claimed “backradiation from greenhouse gases”.

So, they have excised the direct radiant heat from the Sun, which in real world physics is the Sun’s thermal energy in transfer by radiation. Radiation is one of the three ways of heat transfer, the others being conduction and convection.

AGWSF must eliminate all existence of the longwave infrared heat radiation direct from the Sun which in traditional physics is what reaches us from the Sun as heat, and in it’s place convince the general public that visible light from the Sun heats the Earth and is the source of the heat we feel.

I have been discussing this on WUWT in this thread, my last post here:

“Far infrared waves are thermal. In other words, we experience this type of infrared radiation every day in the form of heat! The heat that we feel from sunlight, a fire, a radiator or a warm sidewalk is infrared.

“Shorter, near infrared waves are not hot at all – in fact you cannot even feel them. These shorter wavelengths are the ones used by your TV’s remote control.”

Strictly speaking.. nah, I’d be a secondary source if I told you what heat is. Rather, I recommend you do some research and find the most original and best authentic sources of definition of the meaning of “heat”.

As a hint, that would not be WUWT, nor would it be, y’know, an old simplified teaching page aimed at eight-year olds.

When you can answer what exactly heat is, you may wish to continue this discussion.

For a good read that will test our adoption of the 10 signs is a book by Thomas Nagal titled “Mind and Cosmos”. He’s a professor in psychology and an atheist and basically challenging the theory of Darwinian evolution.

If I may speak from experience: when encountering lazy thinking, point # 3 is nearly ALWAYS accompanied by a failure to recognize when assumptions are being made. Some people really are bright and diligent enough to reconsider their assumptions, but regard challenges to their assumptions as either ‘pedantic’, ‘academic’, or ‘too meta-physical’, and then cross the line into intellectual dishonesty..

Pekka Pirilä | April 21, 2013 at 3:34 | April 21, 2013 at 9:20|
“….Some of Miskoczi’s papers are total crap….”
“….I would expect that Miscolcki is by now fully aware of the situation and understands why his theory is wrong. ….”
Probably you know that climatologists are unable to explain why the climate system is stabilized at about 33 K greenhouse effect. I am a physicist and I am not paralyzed by the standard climatological thinking. In case I need to quantify a fundamentally global scale IR radiative phenomenon I do not listen to my boss or the media first, but go straightforward and COMPUTE what is relevant.
You Pekka Pirilä first should improve your spelling and writing, then read some physics, astrophysics and spend some time to digest at least the fundamentals. If you reach the level that needed for the quantitative computations then read my quantitative results here:

After you understand what is stated there and you do not like it, try to show clearly that my results are inconsistent and do not support my theory. In the frame of science one can only discuss numerical results and not beliefs. If we are done with the numerical details, then we may continue with the theoretical part, but for that you probably need even more reading.
Chief Hydrologist | April 21, 2013 at 2:17 am| April 20, 2013 at 11:30 pm
“….Miskolczi did not find anything new….”
This looks like Spencer’s matured opinion about my work. You should also read the above link until you find something new. If you do not find, then those things are not for you (as it was not for Spencer either). On the other hand, atmospheric absorption and emission theoretically cannot be measured. Why do not you show me a reference if you think somebody published reliable absorbed and upward emitted fluxes before 2004?
As far as I know the first accurate LBL computations of the above flux densities were done at NASA Langley in 2001. (See in: IDŐJÁRÁS, Vol108, No4, 2004: The greenhouse effect and the spectral decomposition of the clear-sky terrestrial radiation. Ferenc M. Miskolczi*1 and Martin G. Mlynczak2; f.m.miskolczi@larc.nasa.gov; m.g.mlynczak@larc.nasa.gov)
“….It is just another mad theory…”
If you refer to the GH theory of Fourier, Arrhenius, Pierrehumbert, Schmidt, Spencer, Lindzen, Trenberth, Ramanathan, Hansen, etc. then you are right. As for my equations, I have strong quantitative support without co2 doubling in GCMs, or without the support of the view of the elite climate scientists and their elite articles published in the elite journals (perhaps with the aid of elite editors and elite reviewers and elite politicians).
That is all.
Ferenc

Webster, he said “stabilize” at the 33C. Since most of the “surface” albedo is due to clouds with are a response to surface temperature, why 33C? That is a much more interesting than it is ~33C based on the current albedo and current TSI. He seems to be of the mind that optical transparency is fixed, like you seem to think that lapse rate is fixed.

For a dry atmosphere with a fixed gravity, those are not mutually exclusive thoughts. Then we both know that a poor assumption at the beginning of a problem can lead to comical results.

What happen Web? Still don’t get it? Water evaporates and produces about 85Wm-2 of latent cooling. Clouds form creating a reflective surface that reflects about 85 Wm-2 from a higher colder place. That is about 170Wm-2, no well mixed greenhouse gases yet. With a surface temperature of about 289K (~399Wm-2), water vapor depresses surface temperature relative to a “true” black body by about 20 C degrees. How cold is that higher colder place that the clouds form? Does that water vapor “envelope” cover the entire surface of the Earth?

Think hard now.

Now the lapse rate above that higher colder space is “fixed” by the requirement of 50% entropy. That “fixes” the lapse rate at ~6.5K/km in the dry air portion of the atmosphere. Warmer surface temperatures just expands the water vapor envelope. Since the surface area per degree latitude expansion decreases as you approach the poles, what happens to the rate of warming?

Back to your standard atmosphere, there is a Cp term. Which dry WMGHG has the largest change in Cp with temperature and pressure? Yes, that would be your buddy, your pal, carbon dioxide. Manabe had it right.

The 33C excursion results from the moderate positive feedback of a CO2 forcing of H2O running into the ever increasing negative feedback of the Planck response. The stable points are solved by a quadratic:

These are natural endpoints caused by a weak forcing function. Yet the response can easily go beyond this point, and that is where the 3C per doubling of CO2 comes in.

The mean lapse rate is fixed, governed by gravity and the mean molar molecular weight of the atmospheric constituents. Add more CO2 and what it does is increase the altitude at which the lowest concentration CO2 allows IR to more easily radiate outward. With a mean fixed lapse rate, the surface warms.

It is a very elegant theory, matched by observational data on Earth, Mars, and Venus.

Webster, That goes back to where you assume that water vapor is a non-condensable gas. Unlike CO2 and the other WMGHGs, water vapor has a condensation temperature that is well above -18C. In its liquid state as brine, its freezing point is ~-18C. The phases of water maintain the ranges of the water/water vapor envelope. Now are you trying to describe a special case like the Russian Scientist with her theory of condensate driven winds? You should be and you should be sticking to dry gases until you derive a method to better deal with the phase changes.

Then once again you go back to BEST. The average altitude of the land Mass on Earth is 680 meters. At what altitude is the majority of land warming? What is the density of the atmosphere at that point? What amplification in temperature would there be for the same energy at the lower density and pressure?

Webster, it is not really the math, it is setting up the problem. That means selecting boundary areas that will fit the physics. The dry air or effectively ideal gas portion is simple. Since you are combining radiant physics that is based on isothermal shells to limit advection, scattering etc. the lowest point that has high accuracy is the turbopause when turbulent mixing can be assumed to be near zero. That currently has a target or reference temperature of ~185K (67Wm-2). If you look at OLR of deep convection clouds you will notice that is commonly the minimum temperature/energy of the deep convective cloud tops.

For the surface or black body source, the most stable reference is the deep ocean temperature/energy ~4C (334.5Wm-2) for the liquid portion. That does not cover 100% of the area of the Turbopause, only about 70% currently, producing .7*334.5=234.5Wm-2 or ~253.5K degrees. That temperature/energy is the “effective” radiant layer.

Above the effective radiant layer, use ideal gas laws and ideal radiant physics. Below that effective radiant layer you have to use fluid dynamics. That means the asymmetry and mechanical influences, Coriolis, tidal and land/ocean distribution have to be considered depending on the degree of accuracy you need.

With a doubling of CO2 being ~1% impact at the effective radiant layer, you need plenty of accuracy. Since the hemisphere energy imbalance is on the order of 18Wm-2 you have to divide the surface into at least two hemispheres, better three sections, to estimate what that imbalance will have on the effective radiant layer.

The Antarctic for example lies outside of the effective radiant layer, ~-20C, all year long. With greater WMGHG forcing that region will actually cool. That drives one end of your ocean heat sink colder than the other.

It is not the math that is the problem. It is understanding the problem first, then breaking it down into manageable chunks.

Some parts I can, some parts I can’t. For the can’t parts it is mainly an issue of how badly I want to.

0.8 C CS is simple. The source energy is 334.5 Wm-2 +/- 10 or so which is producing an equal” back radiant energy” for lack of a better term. A additional 3.7 Wm-2 will increase both by ~ 0.8 C. You only need a simple static model for that. Based on paleo data, the deep ocean temperature range is from ~2 C to 4C and currently sea ice expanse in minimal. We have reached the top of the CS curve. It is non-linear btw because sea ice extent is the primary influence on the source area which is one of the two source variables, Open ocean area relative to shell area times average ocean energy give you the shell energy. There is of course noise on various time scales, but that’s the fact Jack.

See, shifting thermal equator produces pseudo-oscillations on time scales of 30 years to millennia. Long Term Persistence due to massive thermal inertia. Write that down.
.

Clouds are not particularly a problem in this estimate either. Clouds are a response to the source energy and will continue to be a response to the source energy. If you know the cloud coverage percentage (albedo) you know the latent heat loss within a respectable margin of error.

Don’t make the easy parts more complicated than they need to be. CO2 does not drive cloud formation one way or the other. CO2 does impact the rate of upper layer cloud convection and mix phase clouds dynamics. That is a complex part that I will leave to Dr. Curry and others that get paid for that effort.

So now that you have convinced yourself that BEST land only “global” is the key to predicting future climate, you may need to develop an exit strategy.

This site has regional data, land, ocean, combined which if you use with your BEST/CO2 forcing curve fit you can probably determine your margin of error.

Webster, lol, why should I redo all the work? It is nothing but bean counting anyway. The Earth has oceans, for the Earth to have oceans, energy and water must have been conserved. Based on that you add it up.

That is cut from the TFK 2009 energy budget which still has a few errors, but is in the ballpark now that they found the other 18Wm-2 they had lost.

Note ocean LH or latent heat, 97.1 Ocean reflected solar 97.8. You just PROPERLY balance the energy budget without ASSUMING models are better than observation and you end up with realistic values. From the oceans, on average, about 18Wm-2 of latent energy is transferred to the land masses. That fluctuates with natural internal variability. When that in higher, it is called dissipation, when it is lower it is called accumulation. It is a non-equilibrium internal dynamic system. Ein-Eout is a fast response criterion at the TOA which clouds respond to maintain fairly well.

Since the Northern Hemisphere is 2 C warmer than the Southern Hemisphere and the Coriolis effect mechanically isolates the atmosphere of the two hemisphere, the radiant resistance to heat loss is greater in the NH. The north end of your heat sink is warm and smaller. The south end of your heat sink is bigger and cooler. That cause “Land Amplification” of natural internal variability in the ocean heat transport.

Perhaps you were asleep the past few months, but there are a number of the larger names in climate science stooping and fetching to find some out or exit strategy because of the infamous “pause that refocuses”.

“Probably you know that climatologists are unable to explain why the climate system is stabilized at about 33 K greenhouse effect.”
_____
Really?!
Might as well just throw out all the physics textbooks from the past hundred years then, right?!

Whilst we wait and hope that Ferenc will turn up again, can I make reference to your intriguing paper over at Nevens?

As you know I have many thousands of historic references and when I go through them in a few weeks time to write ‘The Long slow Thaw Part 2′ which will push the CET reconstruction to around 1250 (I have some interesting information about the volcano effect in 1258) it would be instructive to see if there are any obvious signs of SSW’s.

What should I look for? It appears to be something that happens November to April primarily, but what effect would that have on weather from the contemporary observers viewpoint?

Jim D | April 27, 2013 at 9:30 pm |
“……Miskolczi has made his own definition of optical depth in the IR window region, and it is no wonder he doesn’t see a CO2 effect there, by definition. ..”
I did not define anything for the IR windows regin, and in all my papers the IR flux optical depth is defined for the full spectrum. Just do not confuse the people. If you want to say something meaningful then try again.

Unfortunately the IR flux optical depth is not my invention. But seems I am the only one who can compute it correctly. There are tons of publications on this, but I suggest you to start with textbooks like:

OK, the surface emits at 288 K which is 390 W/m2. The top of atmosphere emits at 255 K which is 240 W/m2. The ratio of top/surface is about 0.62, and ln(0.62) is -0.49, so the optical depth is 0.49. Your definition of optical depth neglects any IR emitted by the atmosphere in its calculation, which is why it is so much higher than 0.49, but unfortunately the part you neglected is where the CO2 effect is.

“… Really?! Might as well just throw out all the physics textbooks from the past hundred years then, right?!….”

No. You should keep the physics textbooks and distribute among the interested climatologists. But there are lot of things in the radiation physics to throw away, especially from K. Schwarzschid’s presentation at the Berlin Academy of Science in 1914.

And BTW I am listening. I know where the te=255 K comes from, but you tell me why it is not 245 or 265 K and why the surface ts is about ts= 288 K and not 278 or 298 K?

Climatereason | April 30, 2013 at 2:05 pm | Reply
“….change your mind about the likely co2 sensitivity, which I believe you thought was about 0.8C?…..”

Tonyb, I do not really know what kind of co2 sensitivity do you mean. I used to quaote my computations as co2 doubling causes 0.024 absolute increase in the no-feedback flux optical depth . In my 2007 paper I give a 0.24 K (no feedback) increase in surface temperature. (page 22.) .
To claryfy the details please send me an e-mail to fmiskolczi@cox.net.
Thanks,

You Pekka Pirilä first should improve your spelling and writing, then read some physics,

I’m sorry for my numerous spelling errors and my incomplete knowledge of English, but it seems that those are your strongest points against me. When we get to physics you are not on a very solid ground. No competent physicist would ever have brought to public such total nonsense as your earlier paper were in several different ways discussed widely als on the net. You made a great improvement in your 2010 paper as the radiative calculation is finally essentially correct, but your statement that you are the only one to do it correctly is total BS. Many others had done and published correct calculations decades before and all the relevant radiative codes do it accurately enough for their purposes. Some simplifications are always done to speed up the calculation, but your calculation involves simplifications as well.

(I agree that well written references on the radiative calculations are difficult to find, and I cannot present a single one. My statement that hey have been done and published is based on looking carefully at several reports that discuss early radiative codes and papers like those of Myhre et al. From that I have concluded that the basis is sound and correct, but I would certainly prefer a clear presentation of that all. Such details seem to be in unpublished reports of past decades that have never been copied to net.)

Going beyond the basic clear sky radiative calculation, the analysis of the real Earth system gets much more difficult and dependent on detailed properties of the actual atmosphere. Most importantly the role of clouds makes the analysis complex and to dependent on extensive set of data. You present some calculations based on a specific set of data and further specific assumptions. Without such assumptions that you cannot justify fully either from empirical observations or from theory you cannot reach any of the conclusions that differ from main stream understanding. All that are just bold claims that result from your own guesses on what the empirical data represents.

You make use of the approximate relationship E_D = S_U A. That’s a major problem as the relationship is not exactly true, and as the deviations from that are actually essential for understanding correctly the atmosphere. many important phenomena are critically dependent on those deviations. That the relationship is approximately true does not change this fact at all. Even in your 2010 paper you still refer to the fundamentally erroneous interpretation of Kirchhoff’s law of your 2007 paper. Here we see that you haven’t got fully rid of your most serious errors in physics.

“….You make use of the approximate relationship E_D = S_U A. That’s a major problem as the relationship is not exactly true, and as the deviations from that are actually essential for understanding correctly the atmosphere….”

1 – Where do you know this, if neither you nor others are able to compute the correct A.? In M2007 page 6, Fig 2. I showed that the discrepancy is about 4%, ,therefore Ed=Aa is a good assumption to deal with the 33 K greenhouse effect. In fact it is much better than the 300% error of GCM GE predictions.Further on, if you read the article carefully, you will see that in page 16 I explicitely assumed that the spherical emissivity (if you kno what is that) and the surface emissivity is equal to one, therefore in my analysis Ed must be equal to Aa.

2 – I agree, that the true emissivities and reflectances (however small they are) must be considered in the IR as well.

3 – Climatologists define the greenhouse effect as te-ts, where ts is an all-sky global average. Confusing GHG greenhouse effect and cloud effect is utterly stupid. You can not localize the cloudiness, and you can not say that the thermal structure anywhere is not affected by the presence of the global average cloud cover. If you are interested in the co2 GE effect, forget about the cloud cover and compute the co2 effect for the clear portions of the atmosphere. Then compute the fluxes above the cloud top and below the cloud bottom and build your global average case. The father of the h2o feedback (Ramanathan) says that the clear sky empirical greenhouse factor is 1/3. Now you say that it is good for nothing, or you say that his 1/3 is good, but my theoretical and empirical 1/3 is not?
4- I wrote you that I can only argue with numerical results. The global average GHG IR optical depth of the atmosphere is constant = 1.87, therefore no climate sensitivity to co2 changes. Now what are your numbers, and how you get them?
5 – And something about the many different forms of the Kirchhoff law. Tell me how can the atmosphere be in radiative energy balance if the flux form of the law is violated? (Assume, that the transmitted surface flux density does not warm the atmosphere….). Think about slides 11 and 12 in my 2011 EGU presentation.
6 – If you follow the M2007 paper, you may recognize that to derive the OLR=Su*f fundamental theoretical relationship you do not need the Kirchhoff law. It only requires the thermal equilibrium at the ground, which (on the contrary to the constant relative humidity assumption of the GCM modellers) is quite a realistic assumption.

If the optical depth is constant and the lapse rate is constant then the addition of CO2 will raise the altitude at which IR can more easily escape, and the surface temperature will rise accordingly. As the surface temperature rises, more H2O will enter the atmosphere as vapor, and it will condense out at a higher altitude as well. This is a positive feedback as well because water vapor GHG will always positively compensate potentially negative cloud albedo effects.

This works for Earth and one can interpolate from Mars to Earth to Venus as substantiation. Read this:

Webster, “As the surface temperature rises, more H2O will enter the atmosphere as vapor, and it will condense out at a higher altitude as well.”

That is not a valid assumption. There is a temperature decrease with increasing latitude. Water vapor can expand or advect and is not uniformly distributed. In fact, with increasing relative humidity the temperature where condensation is initiated increases. You can have a lower and wider H2O “envelope” that increases the separation between the H20 ERL and WMGHG ERL.

Cappy is wrong, because the lapse rate is already included in this calculation. In fact, as you say “with increasing relative humidity the temperature where condensation is initiated increases”. Since the lapse rate argument says that the temperatures are higher at higher altitudes with increasing GHG concentrations, the IR is filtered at higher altitudes as well. This is the positive feedback effect.

Manabe showed this long ago:

Cappy thinks that increasing GHG gases decrease the temperature, which has never been shown for any planet in the solar system:

ad·vec·tion
[ əd véksh’n ]
horizontal transfer of heat by air: the horizontal transfer of a property such as heat, caused by air movement

There is a transition from a moist thermodynamic system into a dry gas radiant physics dominated system Using non-equilibrium thermodynamics you can separate the two systems. The moist thermodynamic system is dissipative and cumulative, it can expand or contract in all directions. The radiant system is “fixed” and can only rise and fall based on the simplistic radiant up/down models.

All Cappy has to do is draw a lapse rate profile for the standard atmosphere and then for one with a higher CO2 concentration, and then for another one with a higher water vapor concentration.

Ha ha, he won’t because it would look absurd if he had it showing an inflection point where it starts bending the wrong way. Cappy is playing in some fantasy world where the math starts going in opposite directions for small perturbations.

All the physics needed in the radiative calculations has been confirmed by innumerable empirical studies. All competent physicists can use that well confirmed theory, and the databases like HITRAN to do the calculations. Doing it in full detail gets cumbersome and is therefore not done by so many, but there’s absolutely nothing mystical or uncertain in that.

The radiative calculations tell very well, how large and important the deviations from E_D = S_U A are. That’s all so simple that there’s no point in arguing about that.

The Kirchhoff’s law has, indeed, been formulated in many different ways, but in the present way of discussing physics one formulation is clearly the most useful one. This formulation states that the emissivity of a body is equal to it absorptivity when wavelength, direction and polarization are given. All the other correct formulations can be derived from this. From this formulation on can also see, how several incorrect proposed formulations fail. This correct formulation has a direct link to quantum mechanical theory of interaction of electromagnetic radiation with matter and the time reversal invariance of the microscopic theory.

Your papers have been discussed in many fora and their errors are well known and understood by many. There are also some false claims of errors, but there’s no point to go into all that detail or to repeat all the criticism again on this site.

Another interesting point is that the followers of the Ferenc theory have in the past banded together and tried to write a readable exposition of his argument. They tried mightily but ended up giving up on the project because they couldn’t reason through many of his steps (such as application of the Virial theorem, etc).

That is the way science works. If someone can’t recreate the steps of your argument, the argument fails.

One problem with alternative “theories” is that they are always really incomplete. The volume of textbook physics tells on the quantity of knowledge involved. Any concise alternative can discuss only a few details. If this alternative deviates from the standard understanding so much that it cannot be built on that, it cannot be taken seriously until it’s shown that it’s a part of a comprehensive theory with comparable explanatory power as the textbook physics has.

The success of the textbook physics is essentially faultless (i.e. a huge amount of successful predictions and no known severe contradictions). That makes it virtually certain that the whole core is correct in the sense the word “correct” is normally used. There are fringe subjects where the knowledge is weaker and applying the core theory is often very difficult making the derived results less reliable.

Part of what Miskolczi writes is in contradiction with the solid core and therefore most certainly wrong. His use of the formula E_D = S_U A is in that class. He uses that formula to derive results sensitive to the deviations that are well known to exist. Finding out an approximate relationship and then using that as exact is a very common way of deriving spurious and severely erroneous results.

His Figure 3 is an example of a plot that proves little (and what it proves is more or less opposite to his interpretation). Telling that something matches perfectly fro a logarithmic plot that covers 10 orders of magnitude on the horizontal axis and 6 on the vertical is really nonsense, and more so when we notice that the deviation is roughly by a factor of 10 around the altitude of 10 km.

The whole concept of radiative exchange equilibrium as defined by Miskolczi is so essentially wrong that it impossible to understand, how he has been led to take that seriously. His own more detailed calculations contradict it and their results would not make any sense, if that would be true. Discussing that at all is really bizarre. More specifically his Figure 6 is in obvious direct contradiction with the supposed equilibrium.

The correctly used Kirchhoff’s law in combination with Planck’s radiation law proves that no such equilibrium exist when there are temperature differentials. Thus his claims that the result is derived from Kirchhoff’s law tells only about lacking knowledge of physics.

“…..If the optical depth is constant and the lapse rate is constant then the addition of CO2 will raise the altitude at which IR can more easily escape, and the surface temperature will rise accordingly…..”

This is yours and in fact Lindzen’s wild imagination. If the surface temperature rise :

1 – The IR optical depth will decrease because of the shift in the Planck distribuutin toward the the transparent regions. Therefore Olr will increase.
2 – The condensation alitude will increase therefore the radiation from cloud top will increase. Therefore Olr will icrease.
3 – The empirical facts show constant IR absorption and optical depth.
4 – Seems you do not have any idea what is the quantitative relationship between the surface temperature and IR optical depth.

So what is warming the surface and how? Could you please quantify what you say? Hopfully you have the proper RT software to support your statements.

Deep convection should increase until stratospheric ozone adjusts. That will allow more OLR. The actual average cloud base should decrease with greater surface level relative humidity and a near constant specific humidity in the mid to upper troposphere.

Mixed phase clouds should increase providing a number of paths for radiant heat loss with phase changes. An atmospheric heat pipe is a good analogy.

The shift in the diurnal temperature trend in 1985 and the shift to a more stable stratospheric temprature in 1995 tend to indicate there are some other mechanisms in play.

I understand a saturated greenhouse over the global ocean where there is a practically infinite supply of water. What about over dry land including frozen land where there isn’t enough water to saturate the greenhouse?

It is more commone that the prominent scientists who do not have the knowlede neded to recreate the steps fail. If they are unable to use the virial concept, that is their fault. If you have problem with the virial concept read this:R.J.E. CLAUSIUS, 1870: On a mechanical theorem applicable to heat. Philosophical
Magazine, series 4, volume 40, page127.

The optical depth is not constant, but a optical depth that depends on GHG concentrations.The optical depth alone tells very little about the GHE, other factors are also important as you also explain in connection to the Figure 6 of your 2010 paper.

I can only wonder why you have failed to look more at the implications of Figure 6. Repeating the calculation for higher CO2 concentration tells immediately that the forcing from doubling CO2 is close to the value 3.7 W/m^2 (not exactly as the clear sky calculation is obviously not a full analysis, Myhre added an estimated effect of clouds to that).

And I originally discounted solar tidal effects as likely inconsequential until I came across stories from the Inuit, verified by Eskimo and other Arctic dwellers, of celestial navigation gone awry in only the past generation by as much as several kilometers, where the apparent position of the sun on distant landmarks has dramatically shifted.

As a problem in geometry it is perhaps trivial: a mountain peak on the horizon to the South is aligned with the apparent position of the Sun from the point of view of an observer at sea level, and a point on the Western horizon has relocated 5 km.

What is the change in the atmosphere that accounts for this?

Since 1950, the concentration of CO2 has gone from 310 ppmv to 400 ppmv, an increase of 29%;
Likewise, we expect methane, NOx, volatiles, etc have increased in concentration even more than this;
These changes are supposed to have a logarithmic relationship to outcomes, however..

Do we suppose the change in solar tide is so small that it is unnoticed against this (I agree, much larger) change, remembering that for the change in the vertical height, the change in mass resultant is cubed, and cumulative with the concentration changes?
Do we know enough about longitudinal differences in the GHE, that is, does a longer path much affect transmissivity?

The variability in the rates of condensation and evaporation is linked to (atmospheric) solar tides and that does certainly affect optical depth a little. Otherwise the effect is probably small as the optical depth is determined by the mass of the atmosphere rather than by it’s depth in kilometers.

Bart R | May 4, 2013 at 4:11 am |
“…..Pekka Pirilä | May 4, 2013 at 3:31 am |
What you say about mass is very true……”

Bart, the IR optical depth by definition is this : tau = -log(St/Su)=-log(Ta), where Su is the surface upward flux, St is the transmitted surface upward flux to the space and Ta is the hemispheric(flux) transmittance. The fact that Pekka and some others are not able to comprehend and compute it correctly is very dissapointing.

Of corse Ta depends on the atmospheric structure which depends on the climate – through the thermal, density and GH gas structure. Think of the well known Vogt-Russel theorem in astrophysics.

You should not worry about solar tide, the atmosphere knows far better how to establish the equilibrium structure (in a given physical situation ) than the climatologists. The only thing you should do is to monitor the state. Radiosonde obesrvations are the root source of the information. Forcast models, climate models and remote sensing algorithms are depending on this primary radiosonde data base.

The observation of the GH effect is very simple. Gather the reliable structural information on the athosphere, and compute the Ta, tau, and the fluxes. Since you use real input to your RT computations, you can be sure, that you did not miss anything (like solar tide, mass effect, co2 rise, sea level rise, cloud cover change, aerosol load, ect.).

If the optical depth turns out to be constant, then the IR absorption is constant and there is no GH warming, consequently the CO2 GHE based AGW is a nonsense.

Here you do not need any GH theory, just do your own computations and create the IR optical depth – time plot.

Ferenc, this definition of optical depth is not going to see the CO2 effect because the transmitted part originates at the surface and only accounts for 20% of the emitted IR at the top of the atmosphere. The other 80%, that you neglect in the optical depth definition, is emitted by various levels in the atmosphere, and of course varies with greenhouse gases. The transmitted part just goes through the atmosphere because it is at wavelengths unaffected by greenhouse gases, and not surprisingly is also unaffected by increases in greenhouse gases. Check the wavelength that dominate your transmitted part. They would be in the atmospheric IR window.

Well thank you JimD. Now that we don’t have to worry about spectral broadening, we can go with bottom end of the estimated sensitivity range :)

That window though is more of a lens from the true surface. The water in clouds also absorbs solar so increasing cloud cover changes the surface atmosphere absorption ratio which “shifts” the window. Remember, clouds are not a fixed albedo but a response albedo. Clouds are regulating feedbacks. That was the “minor adjustment” of 18Wm-2 in the K&T energy budget.

As I have already written in this thread. Miskolczi did calculate the distribution of the source level of radiation leaving the atmosphere. In the same connection he presents the corresponding temperatures. All that is in the Figure 6 of his 2010 paper. What he has not published is a comparison of those results with a similar calculation based on higher CO2 concentration. If he would have done that, he would have confirmed directly that you are right and his own conclusions wrong or at least so badly misleading that they can be considered wrong.

He has really got very close to disproving his own conclusions. I cannot believe that he doesn’t know that. I thought that knowing that led to his silence, but to my surprise he entered this thread as if he really does not understand this simple point.

The hemispheric or meridional heat flux is not constant though. Due to the asymmetry of the ocean/land masses and their differing heat capacities, the northern flux differs from the southern flux. This is the natural internal variability issue in a nut shell. An ideal gray body would have a constant optical depth from some altitude, but that altitude could vary which is the Greenhouse Effect premise. When the “black body” portion of the system is not uniformly distributed, the problem becomes more interesting.

captd, how much of the window is affected by spectral broadening when the GHGs increase by only 50%? I think you will find almost none, as did Miskolczi. His optical depth stayed the same because that is the window he is exclusively looking at.

JimD, that appears to depend on who you talk to. If a doubling of CO2 lead to 3C or greater warming, there would be some broadening required. Then we should have the pronounced tropospheric hot spot. Since the Hot Spot is not all that hot, I would say little broadening is expected. The start of the window does change with water vapor and mixed phase clouds. If you consider 5000 meters the “surface” the amount of window energy changes with cloud cover and distribution. That is part of the current confusion with cloud feedback sign seeming to swap.

The tropospheric hot spot would be a consequence of the tropical ocean warming and is more a result of the changing lapse rate with increased water vapor than any direct CO2 effect. The tropical oceans have not warmed as much as expected (but Arctic has warmed more than expected), so the water vapor increase is also lagging.

JimD, “The tropical oceans have not warmed as much as expected (but Arctic has warmed more than expected), so the water vapor increase is also lagging.”

Yep. Most of that missing 18Wm-2 was due to Arctic mixed phase clouds. That makes the water vapor increase a bigger question mark. Since water has a different spectrum than water vapor which has a different spectrum than ice, things can get to be entertaining. When water vapor increases water and ice in the atmosphere will also increase and there is an Ice peak that is pretty interesting. With Ice in the atmosphere thawing then either refreezing or combining with ozone, you need some serious revision to the models. This is what I call the atmospheric heat pipe. That makes the uniform water vapor feedback a bit iffy.

I would have guessed the lack of sea ice in the Arctic causes a positive albedo feedback and a death-spiral effect that we are in the middle of, but you are entitled to think it is a positive cloud feedback too.

Webster, “Cappy Dick,
The lapse rate does not change. It is fixed by a thermodynamic relationship.”

The merdional and zonal flux are not fixed due to asymmetry. You will have oscillations. That’s the point Webby, the shell is fixed but the black body is not.

Remember, the open ocean area is your black body. That has other physics, fluid dynamics driving. Clouds are a response to both the ocean fluid dynamics and the dry atmosphere radiant physics. I takes two limits to oscillated.